Bearings
The Hatchet Man Always Sends a Bill: What the Election of 1800 Teaches Leaders About Competing on the Record
Today's midterms are the most expensive in history. Attack ads aren't new, though. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson quietly paid a pamphleteer to smear John Adams, and two years later that same writer turned on him. Washington's Rules of Civility explain what went wrong, and why it matters for founders and their companies.
Be No Flatterer: What Hamilton and John Adams Teach About the Numbers You Bring the Board
"Facts are stubborn things." On John Adams's birthday, a lesson from Washington's Rule 17 and the Federalist Papers on why founders need people, and software, that won't flatter them.
The Off-Site Is Not the Plan
t's October, which means a lot of leadership teams are about to spend two days in a hotel conference room with a facilitator, a stack of sticky notes and a whiteboard full of ideas. There will be a SWOT analysis, a refreshed vision statement and a list of strategic priorities. Everyone will leave energized.
By February, the binder will be on a shelf, and the company will be running exactly the way it ran before.