Last month, I hiked 200 miles (320 kilometers) over two weeks on the ancient Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail in Spain. It was my third Camino in five years. I go back because I have found the Camino to be more than just a fantastic trail. The Camino provides a unique social learning opportunity as I meet and share an intense experience w...

Filling executive jobs is a crucial, and costly, recurring need for organizations. When an executive placement does not work out, it can be a painful experience for everyone involved - the hiring organization, the executive hired, and the executive recruiter. (See a recent, high-profile example

There were over 637,000 people in the United States employed in the management consulting industry in 2016, according to Statista.com. With annual staff turnover rates of an estimated 15-20 percent, that suggests tens of thousands of former consultants leave consulting every year to take 'real' jobs at corporations. Since the consulting and corporate wo...

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is beloved as madness because so many upsets happen. The most newsworthy are when a small school defeats a big school in what sportswriters call a "Cinderella story." Rarely does the same small school coach get to be the Cinderella more than once, though. Usually those coaches make an upset run because of a one...

There were over 637,000 people in the United States employed in the management consulting industry in 2016, according to Statista.com. With annual staff turnover rates of an estimated 15-20 percent, that suggests tens of thousands of former consultants leave consulting every year to take 'real' jobs at corporations. Since the consulting and corporate wo...

The legacies of Presidents of the United States are often summarized by up to three bullet points and an asterisk in Wikipedia. The bullet points are their main accomplishments. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's legacy is summarized this way in Wikipedia: "brought the United States through the Great Depression and World War II to a prosperous future," and "pe...

Major League Baseball managers have a demanding job. They can make hundreds of decisions in every game, ranging from setting the lineup and batting order to which types of pitches to make. Their good decisions are rarely noted. Their mistakes, however, are visible to be criticized by every fan and pundit. That is most true in Major League Baseball’s po...

The year was 2002. When the new Vice President (VP) arrived at my Fortune 500 company, we had an “off-site” meeting to introduce him to his new team. He was a big shot partner from a high-powered consulting firm who was going to ‘take us to the next level,’ according to corporate communications. As a mid-level manager, I was one ...

I'd like to tell the story about my new book, The Camino Way: Lessons in Leadership from a Walk Across Spain (AMACOM, July 2017). I hike and bike long trails on vacations as a hobby, so the Camino de Santiago had been on my list for a while. When I finally got on the Camino, however, I realized it was...

We hear the phrase “think outside the box” a lot. If “the box” is something that is stifling creativity, it sounds like something to avoid. But when “the box” is a framework that smart leaders use to get better results from their teams, it is something to embrace.

In our new book