The Power of Positive Emotions – Nando Parrado
When he was twenty-three, the plane carrying Nando Parrado and his rugby teammates crashed in the Andes Mountains. Seventy-two days later, survivors of the crash were rescued from the wilderness after Parrado and a teammate trekked the dangerous mountains to find help. Not surprisingly, the group’s survival created a sensation around the world, spawning a bestselling book,…
Where is the Leadership in Controlling Healthcare Costs? Utah!
Key Lesson: Sometimes leadership requires asking simple — yet radical — questions to which there may be no easy answers. It’s been a tough week for anyone trying to understand the economics of healthcare in America. Martin Shkreli, a hedge fund manager turned pharma entrepreneur, bought the rights to the critical drug Daraprim, and then…
Queen Elizabeth: Reigning with Resilience
Key Lesson: Ritual and discipline can actually increase our ability to improvise and reinvent ourselves. In her classic HBR article on resilience, Diane Coutu argues that resilient people share three distinct characteristics: Facing down reality, searching for meaning and ritualizing ingenuity. This week, Queen Elizabeth became the longest serving monarch in British history. A…
Middle Management Saves the Day
Key Lesson: When experiments fail, be quick to acknowledge the facts and move on. Like any good CEO, Ryan Carson is interested in creating an environment where workers are happy, engaged and productive. And like many CEOs, he experimented a bit when he founded Treehouse Island, an online coding school based in Portland, Oregon. At…
Heavy Metal with a Higher Purpose
Key Lesson: Great leadership is sometimes quiet and courageous. Heavy metal music — and the bands who play it — are usually associated with anarchy, destruction and a certain brand of counter-culturism. In his new book, Dark Days: A Memoir, lead singer and lyricist Randy Blythe reveals an impressive set of core values that forces us…
Zhou Qunfei: Breaking Glass By Making Glass
Key Lesson: Personal mastery and a desire to learn can take you far. Zhou Qunfei has come a long way from her tiny farming village in China’s Hunan province. As founder and CEO of Lens Technology, which manufactures glass covers for a wide range of consumer electronics, including Samsung and Apple devices, Ms. Zhou recently broke perhaps…
Lisa Dyson: Asking and Answering Big Questions at Kiverdi
Key Lesson: Great leaders are always asking questions — of themselves and others. When Lisa Dyson was in high school, she wanted to learn the programming language C, but her school didn’t offer any classes. She asked her math teacher to teach her. He did. Today, Dyson holds a PhD in physics from MIT and is the…
