The fog of war. For me scenes from Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge, We Were Soldiers are the closest I’ve been to a battlefield. The chaos of battle blurs vision, impairing the decision-making process of both leaders and the boots on the ground. Not to be overly dramatic by comparing our current situation to what is experienced by the carnage of war, plummeting revenue streams mixed with unemployment is creating a fight of the fittest for our companies and clients.

In research I’ve been conducting on how companies have steered through previous economic recessions, I located a study conducted by Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen. They analyzed 4700 companies across three major recessions to look for strategies and traits that actually propelled some companies through the economic downturn to returns that

I made a slide for a virtual presentation I’m doing next Tuesday that keeps running around in my head. The new norm: average and normal will not create enough energy to turn the tide we are all facing. As the business marketplace experienced massive interruption, normal processes that created energy slowed. I once hired someone from a national recruiting machine to join our company that I referred to as a premium boutique company. After 4 months I watched in confusion as his productivity sputtered, never firing to the levels he claimed to have previously accomplished. What I eventually realized was missing was the monolith he worked for churned energy through the massive influx of data, the people who sought the company out, the overflow of opportunity from working with a large cross-functional team. When he joined us, he had to create his own juice every day, all day.

That’s where we are now. Each of us has to fight the

Someday…I will…

How many times have I made that statement? I’m not talking about procrastination which I can be a master at. I’m talking about good ideas that one day I’ll get to. Something that needs to be done but while important, it’s not urgent (at least in my mind which many times has a different purview than my wife). The Four Square Time Management box that President Eisenhower used for leadership decisions focused attention on urgency and importance.

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.
– Dwight Eisenhower

Spending time in the important and urgent box maximizes productivity.

What I’ve found is that we all have ideas that SOMEDAY we’ll get to; something that is meaningful in our lives.

Someday I’ll stretch myself and take on a new role, try a new approach.

Someday I’ll call someone I think of as a stretch, someone who within in my field would be wonderful to connect with but they seem to have a higher status in my mind than what is normally comfortable.

Someday I’ll reach back out to a person who played an important role in my life that I need to say “You are important to me.” It could be someone you haven’t spoken to in weeks, days, or years.  Today, with the turmoil we face, people need those calls.

We all have great thoughts of steps to take, actions that the busyness of work and life pushes aside. Strides make a difference when we shorten