Keeping Remote Teams Engaged

SIXTY-SIX million years ago, an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs and 75% of Earth’s species. Among the survivors was a creature that would teach us critical lessons about thriving amid disruption: the octopus. While other animals’ external armor was useless against this new threat, the octopus survived by being radically adaptable. It has a rare ability; it can edit its RNA to adjust to new conditions within hours. Today’s leaders face their own asteroid strike: artificial intelligence. And like that ancient catastrophe, AI is reshaping the business landscape with breathtaking speed. The question isn’t whether your organization will be transformed, but whether yo…

UNCERTAINTY is dominating business planning. The tariffs announced on April 2 could trigger “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter,” according to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Businesses and nations are locked into a complex, international web of trade networks, just-in-time supply systems, currency exchanges, and mutual competition. And much of it is underpinned by the US dollar. Far from the US being “forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful,” US GDP per capita is much higher than that of any other large country. Consequently, global shocks — perhaps arising from unilateral decisions on international trade, climate change, or a pandemi…

HOW do people learn? Simply put, when the reality does not meet the expectation. When we make mistakes. When we fail. And when we learn from those mistakes, we learn not only the correct way to go, but we gain a deeper understanding of the issue and thus are able to more easily apply it to similar situations. In other words, if we try to solve the problem before we are told how to do it, we learn better. Manu Kapur wrote Productive Failure with this in mind. “The idea of Productive Failure is to be proactive; that is, if failure is so powerful for learning, then we should not wait for it to happen. We should intentionally design for it for deep learning.” Kapur began h…

ACHIEVING sustained success hinges on consistent and well-conceived preparation. If you fail to work hard and think hard during preparation, no amount of talent or performance under pressure is going to save you. This is something so simple and easy to understand, yet it’s a shortcoming I see over and over in sports, business, and life. I was the head coach of the University of Kentucky women’s basketball team for 13 seasons. It was a terrific ride that included three visits to the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament, a Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship, and three SEC Coach of the Year awards. Preparation was key to our success. To give a very basic example of the …

IN MY early managerial days, I would often ask my bosses and peers how they learned the skill of delivering bad news. Almost always, their answer was: “You will learn it over time,” “There is no compression algorithm for experience,” or some variation of needing to put in the time. Granted, experience is one of the best teachers, but I have discovered there are tactics that can be learned so you don’t have to navigate without help. Spotting Problems at Work Detection is about how to spot problematic situations that might require you to intervene and deliver bad news. This might include an employee who is not pulling their weight, runaway projects, and so on. As a manag…

WHILE we all seek expert advice to increase our chances of success, we also encounter situations in which no expert advice can uncover the right decision to make. For example, expert advice can’t tell someone how to decide between a position in the public sector or a private sector position that pays more but serves the public interest less. Such decisions represent dilemmas — situations that involve competing goals, aspirations, and demands. Moreover, dilemmas such as this career choice involve values and intrinsic motivations, which expert advice can’t address. An expert can’t tell you how to live out your values. Ultimately, only you can determine how to enact what y…

THINK back to the last difficult conversation you had. What happened? Maybe you lashed out, got defensive, dodged or overexplained; possibly you lied, got passive-aggressive, or completely shut down, unable to talk. Whatever the reaction, I want you to know that it’s normal. In high-stress interactions, our walls go up, and our armor comes on and we’re ready to protect ourselves in any way we can. Most of the time in difficult interactions, we turn cold. Our bodies tense up, and we’re on the defensive. We start saying things that are hurtful and unhelpful and likely have to repair the situation with multiple conversations to get the issue resolved. This toughness that we…

IT IS ALWAYS a challenge to change the way you think. And success can make it that much harder. In Seduced by Success, Robert Herbold observes that “whether you are talking about individuals, small groups, or large organizations, success generates the risk of falling prey to the mindset of becoming proud, to being very comfortable with your current practices, and to losing your sense of urgency.” Instead of building on your successes, you become complacent, repeating what you have always done. The “legacy of success is too often failure.” As Peter Drucker wrote, “Success always makes obsolete the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities. It always…

THE titles listed below, published in 2025, improve our self-awareness regarding relationships and communication the sine qua non of leadership and provide us with a wider perspective on innovation and the changes taking place around us. The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck by David Spiegelhalter (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025) How dangerous is our diet? How much of sports falls into the realm of luck? When authorities categorize a given event as “highly likely”—how likely is that, really? Whether we’re trying to decide if the benefits of a new medication are worth the chance of side effects or if artificial intelligence truly…

THE group(s) we identify with influence who we are – our thinking and behavior. We are a reflection of the groups we identify with. In The Collective Edge, Colin Fisher explains that “Understanding human behavior means understanding group dynamics—the obvious and hidden ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are shaped by groups.” In addition, “Whether you want to change yourself, your work group, or the world, you need to work with the invisible forces of group dynamics instead of being mindlessly pushed around by them.” We tend to think in terms of individual actors rather than groups, especially when it comes to leadership. Whether things go right or wro…

THE gap between what leaders say and what they do may be the single greatest destroyer of hope in organizations today. I learned this the hard way—by being that leader whose midnight emails contradicted my daytime messages about work-life balance. Often, without realizing the impact, organizations reinforce hopelessness across culture, policy, and procedure. From leaders and employees alike, I’ve heard consistent stories about what creates hopelessness in organizations. Frequently, it begins with the signals leaders send through their actions, including: Learned helplessness modeling: Leaders who themselves display resignation demonstrate that there’s no reason to pu…

ORGANIZATIONS are better managed than ever before. They have been optimized for safety, security, stability, and control. But what we need going forward is dynamic and, yes, inefficient. What is needed now is some deliberate chaos. In The Illusion of Innovation, author Elliott Parker believes that the focus on capital efficiency makes companies less capable of making big innovation bets that progress society because those bets have an uncertain payoff. The problem is that managing for predictability negates learning and progress. They are optimized for the wrong outcomes—predictability, not learning. The result is the illusion of innovation and progress while sacrificing…

WHEN Johann Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled his chess-playing automaton in the courts of 18th-century Europe, audiences were spellbound. The “Mechanical Turk” was the first machine that appeared to think like a human. It beat anyone it played against, regardless of their playing abilities or social status. For decades, it toured the world as proof that human intelligence had finally been replicated by a machine. It took bribery to finally get von Kempelen to reveal the secret of his unbeatable machine. Hidden inside the cabinet, crouched among gears and pulleys, sat a human chess master. The intelligence had never been artificial. It had just been concealed. This may be …

STUDIES show that executive mental health is in a precarious state: 55% of CEOs in a recent 2024 study, for instance, self-reported they were having issues with their mental health. Given how private leaders tend to be about the pressures they’re under, imagine how many haven’t come forward. There’s an unspoken truth in high-level leadership: CEOs and executives bear the weight of their organizations alone, whether they admit it or not. No matter how many advisors, direct reports, or leadership partners surround them, they remain the ultimate decision-makers. Most also operate under the assumption that their primary role is to support everyone else — driving growth, ensu…

EVERY year, organizations spend billions of dollars developing leaders in strategy, finance, and operational execution. Organizations sponsor employees through MBA programs, leadership academies, and executive coaching. They teach how to read a balance sheet, build a competitive moat, and manage a P&L. What rarely makes the curriculum is the inner work — the cultivation of self — that actually shapes how leaders make decisions under pressure; how they treat people when no one is watching, The word "spirituality" makes most boardrooms uncomfortable. It conjures images of incense and meditation retreats, not quarterly earnings calls and market strategy. And yet, the qu…

THE new hyper-digital age will see a significant shift towards participation branding in what some regard as the Participation Age. As consumers increasingly rely on one another for feedback and input on what and where to buy products and services, the best brands invite consumers to participate in brand-building. This participation could involve a range of actions, from co-creation of product design to customer-led innovation efforts, user-generated ads and promotions, and people-powered influencer marketing programs. Notably, each of these actions has the potential to positively influence customer engagement. The participation branding approach co-creates value with cu…

THE most biodiverse place on Earth isn’t found deep in the Amazon rainforest or in the heart of the ocean. It’s at the edges–where forest meets water, where mountain slopes transition to valley floors, where different ecosystems intersect and create something neither could achieve alone. These “edge effects” generate extraordinary abundance through the dynamic interaction of different systems. The same principle applies to our organizations, yet most businesses are designed to minimize exactly these kinds of productive intersections. We organize into departments, create clear reporting lines, and establish distinct territories of responsibility. While this structure prov…

WE experience a tsunami of chaos in our environment, creating cross-pressures to achieve what appear to be contradictory goals at the same time. The solution is what Robert E. Siegel calls Systems Leadership. “Leaders face pressure to do opposing things at the same time, which can make them feel like no matter what they do or how well they do it, they are getting it all wrong.” The Systems Leader by Robert Siegel is based on systems thinking as made accessible in Peter Senge’s classic book The Fifth Discipline. In it, he “emphasized the interplay of actions and reactions between components of any kind of system, and the importance of studying those relationships holistic…

AS organizations navigate the complexities of the 21st century — marked by rapid technological advancements, evolving workforce demographics, and global socio-political shifts — the need for a fresh approach to leadership has never been more pressing. One of the most significant shifts in leadership thinking is the emphasis on inclusion as a core strategic imperative. Inclusion isn’t simply a fashionable term or corporate social responsibility checkbox; it’s a critical driver of long-term organizational success. Why inclusion is so important, and why now? Inclusion has become a focal point in organizational strategies because the world we live in is more interconnecte…

OUR mindset can either work for us or against us. A mind full of false narratives—false beliefs—will keep us from growing into our potential. Unchallenged, these negative beliefs will become the soundtrack we live by and keep us from moving in the direction of our best selves and change the outcome of our lives. Josh Axe identifies in Think This, Not That twelve mental barriers that obstruct personal growth and hinder success. Each comes with a critical mindshift—think this, not that—to realign our thinking and liberate us from our limiting beliefs. Mindshift 1: Create a Breakthrough by Unlimiting Your Beliefs We all have limiting beliefs like “I am not enough or not g…

IN a world of constant change, leaders face relentless pressure to deliver results. Yet the greatest leaders know that true success is not measured only by outcomes, but also by their ability to create conditions for others to thrive and achieve the extraordinary. Of course, everyone in your organization plays an important role. But there are the very select few who show a truly exceptional talent. They are the ones who have the potential to achieve extraordinary things, who push the whole team further, under the most pressing conditions. They are the ones who are not just satisfied with the status quo on a high level. They are going the furthest, taking the risks that p…

I didn’t start out as a founder. I started out as an arms dealer. Not in the literal sense — but in the early days of Silicon Valley, I was on the front lines of sales, business development, and corporate development. I knew how to close deals, spot trends, and move fast. I was valuable but always on the periphery of the real action. I was building. I watched teams turn ideas into companies and products into platforms. After a while, it became clear — I was contributing but not creating. So I made a move. I joined Ooma as a founding executive. We set out to reinvent home phone service and take on the telcos. It was bold and ambitious and taught me what zero to one reall…

AGGRESSION carries a negative connotation. It’s often described as an attribute of anger and a lead-in to violent behavior. But aggression can also be equated with the tenacity with which someone goes after their goals. In this sense, it describes somebody who pursues their goal with great passion, enthusiasm, or intensity. An example may be a young executive, in the process of trying to impress her bosses, who utilizes unconventional tactics to increase her clientele. Her increased status leads clients of one of her coworkers to transfer to her accounts. While her goal had been to increase her sales, she had no intention of hurting her colleague. But nonetheless her cow…

WITH THE SUPER BOWL around the corner, what can business leaders learn from elite athletes about high-level performance? Be like Roger. And Michael. And Simone. And Usain. And many others. That’s key advice for business leaders seeking to improve their impact and excel in a sustainable, long-term way that’s good for them and everyone around them. The Roger, in this case, is none other than Roger Federer, the tennis legend considered an exemplar of athleticism and sportsmanship. But underlying Federer’s and other top athletes’ outsized success is rigorous devotion to routines and practices that optimize their state of mind and body for high-level performance. This mat…

OUR internal conversations may seem inconsequential, but they determine the success of every interaction. They hold secrets to how we can have authentic conversations with others. When CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently testified before the Senate regarding the breach of security using Signal’s group chat during an attack on Yemen, their carefully measured responses revealed something profound. As they faced direct questions about the Signal chat, including an accidental text that included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, viewers witnessed a rare moment when the divide between Ratcliffe and Gabbard’s…