It’s hard to see the big picture while living in a world filled with small thinking people. We tend to start projects with high goals, but somehow drift into the weeds of life, making it difficult to remember what’s most important. Take the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright who made their first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. On…

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To quote the great 20th-century philosopher, Mayberry’s Deputy Barney Fife, one of the best ways to avoid conflicts is to do the right thing in the first place and simply, “Nip it in the bud!” Succinctly put, conflict often happens because people tend to be gutless. I’ve heard it said, “If you want to have less conflict, have more of it.” I think that’s profound….

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The only thing worse than a conflict is an even worse conflict. Here are four ideas from my bestseller, ReTooled & ReFueled, which you might find helpful. 1. Picking the wrong time and place. Little good is accomplished when we are tired, stressed, ill, or focused on too many other issues. Sometimes the best thing to do is schedule an exact time for discussing a…

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Bonnie and I opened The Franklin Group, Inc. in the mid 1970s. Those first years were tough. We worked lots of seventy and ninety hour weeks. It was typical for me to start early in the morning catching up on paperwork, then to spend most of the day visiting clients and prospects. Since we didn’t yet have an art department, a copywriter, or even a…

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Sssshh! Don’t tell anyone, but today there’s a dirty little secret in many of our homes that is robbing us of peace, damaging our witness, and destroying our spiritual vigor. Sure, this might be the introduction to an article about marital infidelity, internet pornography, or one of the other high profile problems. But it’s not. Instead, I’m referring to a plague that we rarely acknowledge…

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We are living in the age of the victim. We live in a culture that worships at the altar of the victim. Americans everywhere are looking for others to blame. If I trip in my neighbor’s yard—it’s his fault. If I hang out at Burger King until I look like a Whooper—somehow Burger King is to blame. On the surface this may be a comforting…

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“There is nothing new under the sun.” If he had never made another statement, this comment would have proven Solomon’s wisdom. Each generation goes to great lengths to convince itself that their generation is the worst and most depraved one yet. But the fact is human nature is pretty predictable. Conflict among humans has been around as long as there have been humans. In frontier…

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As you may know, I am a professional speaker. Each year I travel nationally and abroad and speak about 150 times. Bottom-line: I fly a lot…about 100 flights annually. So, it doesn’t take me long to size up a flight attendant’s mood. This is an important skill because the flight attendant’s mood is a good predictor of how enjoyable the flight will be. Recently I…

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Success is not determined by our hardware — it is usually determined by the software that we’re running. Most people have perfectly capable hardware…normal intelligence and decent health. The difference between winners and losers is in the software they run. By software, I’m referring to the things we tell ourselves, the way we choose to look at the world around us, our internal motivation, and…

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In the spring of 1977, Bon and I determined to begin our own business…an ad agency in Nashville. But, due to terrible spending habits, I’d wasted all the money I’d earned in the three years since graduating from college in 1974. The only money we had was $4,000 that Bonnie’s family and friends had given us as investors in our new business. (To this day,…

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