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Filed Under: Anthony Vlahos
Published on: Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Lead with a Story
Comments (26)
... a simple story changed everything.Once there was a prince who, one day, decided he would give a pair of new shoes to every child in need, but first he'd need a plan...
Two hands:One raises the anchor, hoists the sails and steers out to sea. The other is paralyzed with fear — and doesn't.
One punches the clock.
The other makes an impact.
One hand draws whatever it feels.
The other only draws what it knows it can draw, never drawing very much.
Published on: Tuesday, January 17, 2012
When You’re Very Young
Comments (69)
When you're very young:- You wonder, "What exciting thing is going to happen today?"
- You experiment.
- You LOOK.
- You imagine.
- You learn.
- You play.
- You share.
- You make friends.
- You're curious.
- You're joyous.
- You change.
- You grow.
- You're a fanatic about your loves.
- You're brimming with crazy energy.
- The world hasn't shown you how to corral the thing and be normal.
Published on: Monday, November 28, 2011
The Big Amazing/Little Amazing
Comments (7)
If there existed a business world miracle scale, one might place the resurgence of Chrysler on one end and a certain online shoe retailer that pays shipping both ways at the other.(AT&T's wireless network playing nice with the new iPhone 4S would fall somewhere in between.)
A miracle: Something extraordinary. Contrary to the established constitution and course of things. The opposite of normalness and usualness. Something that challenges the status quo.
Published on: Friday, October 21, 2011
It’s Good to Be Quiet Sometimes
Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, anthony vlahos, twitter, facebook, social media, linkedin
Filed Under: leadership, anthony vlahos, twitter, facebook, social media, linkedin
Comments (26)
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind."Pooh," he whispered."Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you."
* * *
As like buttons spread, it's becoming impossible to get a quiet conversation going; everybody is talking so much.
It's good to be quiet sometimes, not to talk so much, or loud, or big. Not to "Like," Tweet, comment or "digg."
Published on: Friday, August 26, 2011
Chief Eccentric Officer
Comments (14)
Eccentric. Derived from the Greek: ek—out of + kentros—center.When you're off-center, when you're one step ahead of the curve, stray from the norm, you're eccentric — and quite often, superbly successful.
Next month marks the 45th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek, which followed the interstellar adventures of Commanding Officer James T. Kirk and the crew of an exploration vessel of a 23rd century galactic "United Federation of Planets" — the Starship Enterprise. The show was not just fantastic, it was strange and somewhat off. It lives on in endless reruns and multiple remixes.
Eccentricity in the corner office here on planet Earth? Hardly unusual. There's the headline-making:
Published on: Monday, July 25, 2011
Handmade
Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: innovation, anthony vlahos, marketing, business, individualism
Filed Under: innovation, anthony vlahos, marketing, business, individualism
Comments (8)
There is some essential beauty in your hands.A local pie maker bakes all his pies himself using organic ingredients from local sources. He makes all of his dough from scratch, mixing and rolling his pie crusts by hand. He distinguishes his business by delivering his pies to your door rather than selling them out of a shop. The fact that the man who makes the pie is the same person as the man who sells and delivers it makes the transaction fundamentally different than buying a pie at the supermarket.
A CEO pours his heart into his company...educating customers, one by one, about what great coffee can be through the romance and showmanship of a handmade latte. The barista who's hurrying and scurrying around, fiddling with her arsenal of machines, whipping this or drizzling on that, is part of the fancy beverage's appeal: It's being handmade, right in front of you. It seems better simply because you've watched somebody take the trouble to make it.
Published on: Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Three Chords and the Truth
Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, anthony vlahos, communication, risk, message, sacrifice
Filed Under: leadership, anthony vlahos, communication, risk, message, sacrifice
Comments (51)
Wild Thing. Blowin’ in the Wind. All Along The Watchtower. Bad Moon Rising. Ring of Fire. Brown Eyed Girl. Workin' Man Blues. Countless Ramones songs.The basic twelve-bar blues progression is three chords: tonic, subdominant, dominant. Most early Rock & Roll (Elvis, Chuck Berry...) was simply Blues played cut-time.
Published on: Monday, June 06, 2011
Sure-Thing-Taking
Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, innovation, executive hiring, anthony vlahos, risk taking, curiosity, new ideas
Filed Under: leadership, innovation, executive hiring, anthony vlahos, risk taking, curiosity, new ideas
Comments (44)
Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the bird is?We can risk curiosity. In fact, business leaders have to. Without curiosity, our thinking gets small and our vision narrows. With it, real innovation and growth can happen.
We forget to hire for curiosity. The employee who asks "why" a lot; who is inner-directed and develops her own ideas; who is always doing that which she cannot do, so she may learn how to do it; who explores first and then considers whether she will accept the ramifications — that cat often winds up in lockdown.
Published on: Friday, May 20, 2011
First We Kiss
Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, culture, anthony vlahos, communication, brand, consumer relations
Filed Under: leadership, culture, anthony vlahos, communication, brand, consumer relations
Comments (48)
After all, one must start somewhere.Brands we adore, the remarkable customer service rep who fixes our problem, leaders whom we love to follow: They usually begin the love affair by deep kissing us in advance.
It's so much easier to read lips when they're touching yours.
Roller coaster, roller coaster, with your stomach-clenching drops, nerve-shredding loops and shriek-inducing jerks — why do we love you so? You incite rollicking fear, make our hearts race, send our knuckles white, chuck us around unmercifully — and we keep getting right back in line for more.
Published on: Monday, April 04, 2011
Ask a Poet What Makes a Great Leader
Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, culture, anthony vlahos, vision, leaders, national poetry month
Filed Under: leadership, culture, anthony vlahos, vision, leaders, national poetry month
Comments (30)
Longfellow and the iFellow seem to be odd bedfellows with very little connection. What do great poets and great leaders have in common? Quite a lot. For example:- Great poets muse on the big questions: "How did we get here?"; "What's important now?"; and "Where do we go next?"
- They're great at conjuring different pictures of reality — things as they are and as they ought to be.
- They listen more than they invent.
- They tear down as much as they create. They violate the meter, break the status quo, point at frauds and flawed models, take sides, start arguments, name the unnameable and say the unsayable.
- They leverage their talent for simplicity to shape the world around them, transform culture and create change.
Published on: Friday, March 11, 2011
“What Ships Are For:” Working and Leading with Purpose
Comments (3)
When I was little and my dad was a giant and always in a hurry, I remember frisking alongside him, trying to keep up with his long strides as he made his way to his shop off Seventh Avenue in New York City's fashion district. In my memory, the sun bounces off the hood of a taxi and the smell of fresh-baked bread wafts in the air. The morning brims with purpose. My dad is going to work, and he is taking me along with him.Probably the single most useful thing I ever learned from my dad was about purpose. "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for," he'd say. Picture being small and hearing these words being spoken by a man of mythical stature with a Greek accent. It is possible to imagine the Homeric overtones of such a moment.
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