Which Three Fictional Characters Best Describe You?
This week’s Oswald Letter is a guest post from Elizabeth Petersen, Simplify Compliance’s executive vice president of strategy and revenue. by Elizabeth Petersen
Tag: Dan Oswald
Master self-awareness to grow as a leader
by Dan Oswald How well do you really know yourself? It can seem like a silly question. You spend every day with yourself. You’re privy to all of your most private thoughts. Yet how well do you know yourself? The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. […]
Be relentless in pursuit of what you want most
by Dan Oswald In the blockbuster Disney movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Captain Jack Sparrow’s most treasured possession is his compass. This makes sense. Jack is a ship’s captain, and he needs his compass to do his job—navigate the high seas. The problem is that his compass doesn’t tell […]
Effective decision making requires two brain systems
by Dan Oswald As a business leader, it’s likely you’re continually looking for ways to make better decisions. If so, you might want to take a look at the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman’s book is an interesting look into how people think and make decisions and the […]
A little compassion would have gone a long way for United Airlines
by Dan Oswald Imagine you own a restaurant. It’s a small, cozy place that caters to families and has a great reputation not only for the food but also for the atmosphere. One evening, a customer comes in and orders that night’s special. When his entrée arrives, he takes issue first with the temperature and […]
Learn great leadership skills from the pros
by Dan Oswald The other day, an adviser I work with who provides me with organizational development counsel sent me an e-mail. It caught my attention, not just because he sent it on a Sunday morning, which isn’t the norm, but because of what it contained. The sender has been providing advice and counsel to […]
‘Culture of help’ benefits the company and the individual
by Dan Oswald Early in my publishing career, I took the “assist” part of my editorial assistant job quite literally, and I would volunteer for nearly every task lobbed at my team by our publisher. After one meeting in which I offered to take on a particularly tedious project, a senior colleague stopped by my […]
Uber says it’s time to stop tolerating ‘brilliant jerks’
by Dan Oswald How much are you willing to put up with from a talented employee? That’s a question that, as a manager, you’re bound to face sooner or later. It’s a question the Uber board of directors is faced with right now. Arianna Huffington, an Uber director, is leading a search for a new […]
Predicting success is hard
by Dan Oswald How good are you at picking winners? If you’re one of the 70 million Americans who filled out a bracket for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, you probably have a sense of how hard it is to predict success. You think you’ve done your homework. You do your research, looking at win-loss […]
Nurture employees’ passion to achieve success
by Dan Oswald Life is too short to do something you hate. It’s a simple statement that’s hard to dispute, but shouldn’t all of us expect more than not to hate what we do? I think so. It isn’t enough not to hate your job. Most of us will spend more than 10,000 days at […]