Life is about choices; we make choices every day that affect not only the immediate subject, but also those around us and our future.
Sometimes we don’t even notice the choices we make, but that doesn’t change the size of their effect.
The following is a teaching fable that has been around in various forms for years.
An old man told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “The battle is between the two animals that live inside us all.

One is Evil—it is made of anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false …read more

Be sure and check out what’s for breakfast with the boss from Hell
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Raising kids is about teaching values, among other things, but kids learn by watching more than by listening. “Do as I say, not as I do” just doesn’t fly these days.
Cheating is not only a good example, it’s a global one.
Everyone knows that cheating is wrong, yet in US surveys 64% of high school students say they have cheated, while 84% of undergraduate business students and a whopping 56% of MBA students also admit to cheating. Not only is cheating prevalent, parental action often condones it.
Since many of these same parents are leaders in the workplace, the results of a …read more

(Click here to lean more about Ms. Davis, who, by the way, is still alive.)
Now check out my other WW how not to think
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What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?
If your name is Tom Dunn and you spent 20 years, first as a defense counsel in the Army Trial Defense Service, then stints in Florida, New York State and most recently as head of the nonprofit Georgia Resource Center, you find a less stressful environment in which to indulge your passion.
You teach in a tough middle school in Atlanta, Georgia where “ninety-three percent of students are black and 5 percent Hispanic; some 97 percent qualify for free or reduced …read more

Yesterday was Bosses Day and in honor of that I’m going to share some information on bosses—BIG bosses.
These days’ people are incensed with executive pay packages on and off Wall Street.
For years there has been much talk about pay for performance, but I haven’t seen any strong connection—have you?
And certainly not this year.
But the recession doesn’t seem to have slowed down CEO compensation at all and I’m not even referring to Wall Street.
You’ve probably never even heard of the 5 most highly compensated CEOs, unless you are unfortunate enough to own the stock or work or been laid off from …read more

Some of the articles I’m sharing today refer to CEOs, but the advice in them can be tweaked to apply to any level in both professional and personal arenas.
First, Steve Tobek, who writes The Corner Office for BNet offers some great thoughts entitlement, which he says has been around for decades. The cure is empowerment backed by accountability. Bull’s-eye, Steve!
Next is a great offering from McKinsey on re-energizing your team. It talks about how to overcome fear, denial and the need to learn and change—emotions that teams at all levels are facing.
By now, everybody knows that President Barack Obama won …read more

On September 25, 1957, 300 United States Army troops escorted nine black children to Central High School in Little Rock after unruly white crowds had forced them to withdraw.
In 1976, the shooting of a 13-year-old sparked a children’s uprising against apartheid that spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.
September 15, 2009, Seattle schools plan to lower the passing grade from C to D, partly match the rest of the state’s districts and partly to keep their funding by keeping kids in school.
On September 24, 2009, …read more

Cheating isn’t new, nor is my writing about it.
It probably dates back to the cavemen, but it’s become more acceptable with the passage of time. Or maybe it’s just that the level of cheating needed to upset people and the stakes involved have increased so much.
An article in the Sun Journal gives an excellent overview of the pervasiveness of cheating.
Of course, the best thing to do if you’re going to cheat is don’t get caught, but if you do and lie about it the penalties increase exponentially.
For some reason people are tolerant of the cheating, in some cases they even …read more

I’d never heard of Gerald W. Johnson when I came across this excellent quote, “The closed mind, if closed long enough, can be opened by nothing short of dynamite.”
It was so perfectly aimed, so true and so applicable that I went looking for what else he said.
There’s not a lot, but you’ll love what I did find. Johnson’s comments seem especially pithy and apropos for our world today.

Consider this, “No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.” These days, the higher you go the harder it is to find anyone …read more