Leadership by example helps forge a team. Let’s see how penguins can lead the way.

Leadership is not about a person’s – or an animal’s – title. It’s about, quite literally, leading the way.

A few years ago, there was a brand new fitness program at the San Francisco Zoo – a program that sort of just took off on its own without any goals or “leadership” from the zookeeper. This fitness program is for the birds, but it carries a leadership lesson for all of us.

The specific birds in question are penguins. Penguins are supposed to swim. In fact, 46 penguins at the San Francisco zoo had been taking regular dips in the pool to cool off and keep their feathers sleek. Ah, ain’t life grand. Lie around, eat, swim, rest, eat, swim, relax, eat, swim. [Read more…]

The hot days of summer are about to transform you. To find out how, let’s take a stroll down to the Luangwa River and commune with our friend, the hippopotamus.

Ahh… the hot and lazy days of summer. Time to relax. Time to take it easy. Just like the hippos in Africa’s Luangwa River.

What do hippos in Africa have to do with you?

Very little – until the hot weather turns dry. During the dry season, an amazing thing happens to the Luangwa River. It shrivels up. Bit by bit it recedes until nothing is left but a few pools of water. [Read more…]

There’s more to happiness on the job than choosing what you do. Here are some even more important factors to consider.

We spend a third of our waking hours on the job. If our job sucks, it’s hard to be happy. If our job is great, we have a pretty good chance of being happy.

But what makes a great job. How do you choose one that will bring happiness? [Read more…]

In the emerging gig economy, more and more people are choosing to work anywhere they feel like. These are the digital nomads.

Thanks to the Internet, we have a world full of digital nomads. In the days of moat diggers and blacksmiths, it was important to live close to your work. Moats are not transportable, and if you tried transporting a customer’s horse, there was likely a hanging in your very near future. These days, a lot of work is geography independent.

Here are a few of the careers that will follow you no matter where your feet or a plane ticket will take you.  These are generally freelance careers, where you work for a variety of companies and individuals: [Read more…]

The day I lost my shoes, and how I turned that into an opportunity.

Dorothy lost hers. I forgot mine. My wife broke hers. I speak of shoes, of course.

So why are we all smiling? We each have our reasons, and here they are… [Read more…]

Everybody gets hurt sometimes. And everybody needs somewhere to mend. Here are some ideas for mending places.

People break.  It happens all the time.

But people patch themselves up pretty well most of the time.  Most breaking is like hurt feelings or loneliness or paper cuts.  They go away.  They mend on their own.

In my younger days, I would go down to the river to recuperate.  I would sit on a big rock and just watch the water flowing by. The water was soothing, and my troubles seemed to melt away. It seemed like the perfect place to mend. [Read more…]

This is a true story of how I overcame the evil magic of a real witch.

This goes back a while, but I recall how we almost ruined our honeymoon in Venice. My new bride, Chantal, was looking forward to this stop more than any other. Switzerland had been divine. Austria had been wonderful. But Venice was what she was most looking forward to.

We found a lovely pensione in Lido, a picturesque island just across the lagoon from Venice. [Read more…]