Imagine that a professor were to beam in from a late 19th century laboratory. Once he had recovered from the shock of the trip itself and the variety of new machines and instruments surrounding him, he would begin to smile and nod in recognition abo… [more]

It’s often said that the most important task for leaders is to develop their people. While there’s more than a grain of truth in this, there’s also an old saying from personal growth, Let It Begin With Me. To be able to develop others, you nee… [more]

I recently caught up with my old friend, Mike Crawford while preparing a talk on research strategy. After a 30+ year career in academia, including 26 years as a professor at U Texas at Austin, Mike joined a technology start-up as CTO in Idaho in 2004… [more]

Although many people speak about the year “winding down”, family, friends and clients describe this time of the year as action-packed: there’s lots of work to finish before the Christmas break, there are cards to be written, presents still … [more]

I was intrigued when a friend drew my attention to a recent PLOS ONE article by Albert Costa et al which investigates the role language plays in ethical decisions. At least one retraction or corrections seem to be in every issue of the major scie… [more]

One short exercise in my leadership workshops is to ask people to think about the best leader they’ve ever worked with or for, and what qualities made that person special. Each time I run the exercise, I get to think about my father, Thomas A. … [more]

Ask a fresh-faced, bright-eyed Ph.D. student at the outset to name their career goal and a majority will say, “professor.” Although most of them will never get there. The numbers that achieve this goal are very low indeed, varying somewhere betw… [more]

Late one evening, when we were all sitting around and philosophizing about life, a friend of mine said to me, “you know, you’ve clearly cold-bloodedly masterminded your career.” Through the rear-view mirror, it all looked planned. Hand on hear… [more]

I was recently invited to participate in the inaugural three-day training for International project management from the International Association of Project Managers (IAPM) in Röthenbach, near Nürnberg, Germany. On the first morning of the trainin… [more]

In my experience, most researchers are looking for a more productive environment that is conducive to performing great work. In most cases, the current structure and dynamics of research groups does not help them to meet this aspiration. In an earli… [more]

I often hear from clients about the side effects caused by the tension between their desire to collaborate and their people’s need for individual success.  These can take the form of people hiding data from their colleagues, or not putting them in… [more]

This week's article is an interview with Don Fornes, CEO of Software Advice. His blog A Million Little Wins offers perspectives on how to build a business. Don connected with me after I published 7 ways to improve your meetings in August. I asked Don… [more]

When discussing with clients how to lead their staff, one question that arises often is, how much initiative should my people show? In their classic HBR article, Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? Oncken and Wass lay out a five-level scale of ma… [more]

Very few people like to have to say “please listen: my project is a dog’s dinner” and, in many organizations, the culture of project management discourages raising such red flags. Gretchen Gavett recently published an article, “The hidden fa… [more]