Our lives seem to be a daily battle between what we want and what we need. From cars to houses, to relationships, to food. While most people can distinguish wants from needs, it never hurts to be reminded.

In 1988, Science fiction author Isaac Asimov predicted the internet and more importantly how many of us learn today. He said, “Through computers, we'd have access to "connected libraries," which would act as a "teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species." He went on to say, "Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. And everyone is different. For some, it goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction."

Books are no less than gurus. They are our best of friends, patient enough to be with us during hard times and the one to guide us at all times.

Being anticipatory can mean many things. In some cases, it’s about identifying opportunities for major disruptions that you yourself can introduce (think Uber, Kickstarter and other ideas that set entire industries on their ear).

In a previous article, I discussed the essential value of encouraging innovation on an organization-wide scale. To help achieve that, I addressed varied ways to nurture an innovative culture, including financial rewards, time off and the flexibility to work from a place that’s inspiring.

The United States has long been the natural home of the entrepreneur but recent reports suggest that Americans are less likely to start a company now than in the past four decades. So what has led to this worrying decline in home grown entrepreneurship? And does this low point offer an ideal opportunity to launch your start-up?

There were two controversies surrounding public figures being asked personal questions on camera this week, which provide hugely valuable lessons for senior business leaders.

As a sequel to my previous article, “The Characteristics of Toxic Leadership”, here are my thoughts on how to deal with a toxic boss. Your relationships at work are an important part of your happiness and success in life. A lot of your time is spent at work, in direct contact with your colleagues and managers.

Look out Mark Zuckerberg, Hillary Clinton wants your job. At a Harvard University event on leadership last week Mrs Clinton was asked which company she would like to become the CEO for and why: her immediate response was Facebook because of the immense power it has over the world’s flow of information (fake or otherwise).

I won’t claim this is my call, but it is clearly worth spreading as far as possible. In fact, I first heard it spoken publicly by Sir Kenneth Olisa OBE, The Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London, and I suspect even he was repeating it.

Leadership is struggling in organizations and that might be an understatement. The disengagement rate of employees is at an all-time high. The current failure rate for a new leader in an organization is 60% and 71% of organizations don’t feel their leaders can lead them into the future.

Many business consultants agree that benchmarking is imperative to strategic planning. By using metrics, a business will study the practices, designs, and financial outcomes of industry leaders with one distinct purpose: To keep up with the pacesetters.

Picture it! Streams of colour, delicious smells, a flurry of different cultural and religious based activities, song, dance, partying, eating, drinking, praying, tears, fears and emotions.

Most everyone is familiar with postmortems, at least in a medical sense. With regard to medicine, a postmortem is conducted to determine why a person has died.

In an era of fiscal and time constraints, is it possible to sell your ideas to company leaders? Yes, but the success depends on how you frame the opportunity.

A great example of being anticipatory is ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky, who once said that the secret to his extraordinary career was skating to where the puck was going to be, not to where it had been.

The common view of customer service is one focused on reaction. A customer buys something, has a problem, issue or question—either during the sales process itself or later on—which is then handled by a customer service professional.

As I left the man’s office, I couldn’t help but think his company was succeeding despite him.  It could have been the way he talked in terms of “I” instead of “we," how he talked about making all the decisions instead of empowering his people, or how most of his people worked there not because they wanted to, but solely because of the paycheck.

Last week, in Las Vegas, during the largest fashion industry trade show, MAGIC/PROJECT, I delivered the keynote presentation for the YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund and UBM Advanstar. It was entitled, “Disruption is the Mother of Invention.” 

You may have a leadership title, or tremendous leadership potential, but that in itself doesn’t give you leadership presence.