On May 10, 1774, sixty-four-year-old King Louis XV of France died, and though the country went into the requisite mourning for its king, many French people felt a sense of relief. He had ruled France for over fifty years. He left a country that was prosperous, the preeminent power in Europe, but things were changing—the […]

Now let’s talk about the more controversial topic, differentiation among people. It’s a process that requires managers to assess their employees and separate them into three categories in terms of performance: top 20 percent, middle 70, and bottom 10. Then- and this is key- it requires managers to act on that distinction. I emphasize the […]

One of the main misunderstanding about differentiation is that it is only about people. That’s to miss half of it. Differentiation is a way to manage people and businesses. Basically, differentiation holds that a company has two parts, software and hardware. Software is simple- it’s your people. Hardware depends. If you are a large company, […]

Becoming a Leader is a lot like investing successfully in the stock market. If your hope is to make a fortune in a day, you’re not going to be successful. There are no successful “days traders” in leadership development. What matters most is what you do day by day over the long haul. There is […]

The make-or-break importance of candor in U.S. business is relatively new, actually. Up until the early 1980s, big companies like GE and thousands of others operated largely without it, as did most companies regardless of size. These companies were a product of the military-industrial complex that grew up after World War II. They had virtually […]

The first thing to know is whether you are a reader or a listener. Far too few people even know that there are readers and listeners and that people are rarely both. Even fewer know which of the two they themselves are. But some examples will show how damaging such ignorance can be. When Dwight […]

I have always been a huge proponent of candor. In fact, I talked it up to GE audiences for more than twenty years. But since retiring from GE, I have come to realize that I underestimated its rarity. I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business. What a huge problem […]

If there is one of my values that really pushes buttons,it is differentiation. Some people love the idea; they swear by it, run their companies with it, and will tell you it is at the very root of their success. Other people hate it. They call it mean, harsh, impractical, demotivating, political, unfair-or all of […]

The second thing to know about how one performs is to know how one learns. Many first-class writers- Winston Churchill is but one example- do poorly in school. They tend to remember it the same way. They may not have enjoyed the school very much, but the worst they suffered was boredom. The explanation is […]

I was forty-three when I attended the National War College. Over the course of the previous twenty years, I had trained in probably twenty-five countries and had served in a dozen different assignments. Each job broadened my skill set. This is standard in our military. Every officer and noncommissioned officer goes through that same maturing […]