I love the 4th of July. I’m a sucker for family gatherings, parades, and fireworks. I confess, however, as I look forward to celebrating our Independence Day tomorrow, I’m a little worried about the state of our great nation. Correction, I look at the state of our politics today and I am depressed. Our elections…
“The village knows.” Three little words have turned out to be some of the best leadership advice I’ve received in the last several years. I got them from Alabama Farmers Co-op CEO, Rivers Myres shortly after I started as we were talking about leadership and the filters between the business and the leader. “Just remember,…
I spent the last two weekends at the graduations of two of our daughters – one from high school and one from college. I am a sucker for good speeches. I especially like graduation speeches. There is something about the art of trying to impart some wisdom upon the next generation – the talent, the…
I spent Saturday afternoon playing pickleball. For the uninitiated, pickleball is a sport you’d get if tennis and ping-pong had a baby. It involves a smaller court than tennis but uses a wood-like paddle and a wiffle ball. As any of the millions of crazed pickleballers will happily tell you, it is the fastest growing…
I’m a bit of a space geek. So last Thursday morning, I set my alarm and blocked 30 minutes on my calendar to turn to YouTube and watch Space X attempt to launch its Starship and Super Heavy booster. I love watching Space X launches. They are masters of the live feed and their launches never disappoint. This one…
“You’re not a real attorney until you’ve fired your first client.” I got this advice from someone as a third-year law student. I was flabbergasted. What the heck was this guy talking about? Isn’t the whole goal to get and keep clients? I couldn’t imagine someone hiring me to be their attorney let alone firing…
Over the holiest of Christian weekends, I spent time thinking about faith and – because I write this every week – how faith relates to leadership. Discussing faith and religion in a professional setting is challenging. Faith is deeply personal and, while some are called by their faith to spread the Word, others are upset…
Remember the telephone game? I played it as a kid. Sometimes we use it as an icebreaker. It begins with a group of people sitting in a circle. One person whispers something to the person next person. That person then attempts to repeat what they heard (or thought they heard) to the next person. This…
What does a 70+ year-old farmer, a tiger, a tornado, and an ancient philosopher have in common? It sounds like a set-up for a joke, but these four things combined this past week to provide some well-needed perspective as we head into our busy planting season. The Farmer. I spent three days this past week with…
The first time I understood the incredible value of the US agriculture supply chain, I was in an unexpected place. I was riding in the back of a Humvee bumping along a dirt road outside of Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1999. Riding along with me was one of our translators, a 30-something man who spoke…
