This last year has felt more solemn and intense than any time I can remember. Laughter and joy seem harder to find. I haven’t thought much about April Fools Day since I was a teenager, but now might be a good time to bring some laughter into your workplace. Practical jokes can become dangerous if you get carried away, but […]

Highlighted by Jessica Kennedy’s Harvard Business Review article, a study of over 11,000 participants revealed that job promotions may make it more likely you will be blinded to the unethical behavior within the organization. Their study specifically found that when an organization wanted to lie, 39% of low-ranking employees would dissent. But only 14% of high-ranking employees were willing to […]

In 2000, at a Billy Graham Conference on Evangelism, God divinely hand-picked the ministry leaders seated at table 71. This group of leaders each had a passion for reaching the unreached people groups in the world with God’s Word. That table of leaders began a collaborative effort that has advanced the Bible translation movement years ahead of what could have […]

If you’ve managed people for long, you will eventually have someone who is not meeting your expectations. Determining the next steps can be challenging. When someone is confronted with poor performance, some will get defensive and immediately assume that the problem is yours, not theirs. Their arrogance or overconfidence can prevent them from being willing to correct their issues, making […]

Stephen M.R. Covey in his book, Speed of Trust, wrote, “Trust is equal parts character and competence… You can look at any leadership failure, and it’s always a failure of one or the other.” Leadership failure comes when a gap exists in character or in competence.  Character and competence working together build trust amongst a team and give the leader […]

There was a surgeon who came in occasionally to the bank where I worked. He would park his new Mercedes by the front door and brag about his car to our staff. He wore lots of jewelry and flashy clothes and loved to talk about his success. One day this surgeon met with me to request a loan. I discovered […]

My good friend Rick and I both graduated from the same school with accounting degrees. We also both started with respected CPA firms upon graduation. Rick dreamed of becoming one of his firm’s youngest partners and he began diligently working towards that goal. I also dreamed of being a partner, but soon realized that public accounting was not for me. […]

As the Chief Lending Officer of a small bank, I was trying to clean-up a lot of problem loans made by the previous CEO. My focus was on collecting the business loans we had, rather than trying to make questionable new ones. So, when a guy I knew from high school asked for a new loan, I was skeptical. When […]

When I began my banking career, I spent time investigating bank frauds. One of the frauds I worked on was that of a bank president who determined his significant pay wasn’t enough. This president began producing false travel expense reports, claiming that he was driving to headquarters, four hours each way, multiple times a month. His spending habits, however, continued […]

Stephen Covey in his book, Speed of Trust, says, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today.” In business and in life, the fruit is the best part of planting seeds. Yet, fruit takes time to grow. In order for fruit to grow, it takes watering, tending, pruning and waiting. The […]