The Next Practice Institute

The expectation of being connected around the clock is now a given of corporate life. Conference call invites, meeting requests, project updates, iterations of the latest Power Point deck. Yet the “Never Offline” notion misses a crucial point. Only the people who can manage this relentless onslaught of digital distractions will succeed, today or in the future.

Every week I move certain things from my To Do list over to the next week. I’ve thought about these things many times between. . .

The other day I did the simplest thing. It took 15 minutes. And the amount of value it produced was totally ridiculous.

As I travel the world teaching all kinds of “soft skills” to business people, one of the most common questions I get is “how do I...

“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin wrote that. He was wrong. It was only...

Florian wanted to up his game. His recent review went fine. But he wasn’t getting noticed by the higher-ups. Jeff had the...

This morning I opened a Christmas card from my realtor, whom I’ll call Gail. The cover had photos of her kids, and the inside had a note to me written by hand: “Erica, hope you and your family have a wonderful first Thanksgiving at Lincoln Road!”

Kristina walked into my office and took a seat. “So, tell me,” I said, “what excites you about this role?”

I woke up with a start at 3:15 this morning. Was it my husband crawling into bed with me? My cat snuggling up with me? No, nothing sweet like that.

In Saturday’s New York Times, Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd described what she called “Barry’s War Within.” Imagining Obama’s inner conflicts over Syria, she asked: “In his head, is Barry at war with the commander in chief?”