Taking Smart Risks

Smart risk-taking involves passion, planning, active learning, communication, and the ability to embrace and reward the inevitable small failures along the way. The application of Sundheim’s smart risk paradigm can transform businesses and personal lives. Counter-intuitively, we can gain more control by taking smart risks.

Don’t Mistake Your Vision Statement for a Vision

Vision statements are words that have been coiffed and manicured to perfection. They’re usually uninspiring and dead on a wall. By contrast, great visions are big ideas that are alive and messy. They’re engaging and visceral.

Leadership Without Easy Answers

President Obama walked out of his final press conference yesterday and into the Roosevelt Room to do his final media interview as President. He sat down with Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor, four of his former advisors and speechwriters who now run Pod Save America, currently one of the top podcasts…

The Risk of Not Risking

Risk taking is about creating new things, understanding what you’re made of, and feeling confident and alive. You lose these when you play it safe for too long, in essence losing the “life” in life. So you need to take risks. But even when you know that you need to take risks, fear can still…

Spend More Time With Your Customers

Sometimes the most powerful business advice is the simplest. Businesspeople give a lot of excuses for not spending enough time with customers. Being too busy is the most common one I hear. Whenever an executive tells me that she’d love to spend more time with her customers, but she’s too busy, I ask to see…

3 Reasons Your Strategy Meetings Irritate Your Team

Originally published March 1, 2016 on Harvard Business Review by Doug Sundheim Used well, strategy meetings provide clarity and momentum. They align a team around key decisions and create positive energy. Used poorly, strategy meetings irritate people. They waste time and energy, or worse, strengthen entrenched points of view creating frustration and resignation. In my work…

Bring Back the Joy In Life

There’s magic in youth. Unaware of the tensions, trade-offs, and struggles of adulthood, we’re lighter. We laugh more easily. We play more freely. We dream bigger. Then “real life” steps in. The first disappointment. The first failure. The first break up. We start to realize that life is pretty tough. These letdowns happen again and…