I don’t idealize a great many people that I’ve known, but Richard Maddy is an exception. A violin maker, legendary string instrument rebuilder, WWII paratrooper, and son of the founder of Interlochen Center for the Arts, I met Richard when we were both serving on the alumni board of the organization his father had founded. When the board would get bogged down in the minutiae and politics of whatever problem had wound its way around us, Richard was always there to remind us what we supposed to be doing. He would ask, in some form or another, “Is it good for the kids?” Read more…

We get letters. So far, and it’s only been a few weeks that my book has been out, the letters have been pretty nice. No one, yet, has told me they took my advice and bankrupted their company, disinherited their kids, or run off with the circus. But it’s only Thursday. There’s still time.

A letter arrived last weekend (okay, officially it was an ‘email’ but it was so carefully composed it seemed like an old-fashioned handwritten note from a previous era) that thanked me for having helped the letter-writer achieve an epiphany regarding a thorny problem her consulting company had been working through for a year. It seems that, among other things, what made it possible for my book to be genuinely helpful was that I had taken care to get myself out of the way of the message.

I have helped a lot of smart people become successful authors and leaders, and one of my first rules for my clients is: you must tell your audience as quickly as possible who you are. Say it on the flap. Say it on the back cover. Say it in the intro. Because, if an author tries to keep themselves in the background, the reader will be unable to hear your message until they feel that they know where you’re coming from. Read more…