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The Creator’s Code is based on interviews with 200 entrepreneurs who have started companies that generate more than $100 million in annual revenue or social enterprises that serve more than 100,000 people. Some of these creators have started businesses that generate more than $1 billion in revenue every year. Crisscrossing the country, I spent hours interviewing creators in technology, retail, energy, health care, media, mobile applications, biotechnology, real estate, travel, and hospitality, working to understand their approach. Across my research, I witnessed individuals turning small notions into big companies time and again. From the creators who invented online storage provider Dropbox (annual revenue $200 million), fast-casual restaurant chain Chipotle ($3.9…

I recently met with a capable and driven executive and asked him, “How are you?” He gave me a rapid-fire answer of all of the things he was doing: travelling, business updates, career changes and his children’s innumerable activities. It sounded like an intense but satisfying life. Then I asked him again, “How are you really?” And the moment I did, he became emotional and the reality of his life just flooded out of him: his stress, his frustration of trying to juggle it all, his sense that he had no time to really think, or play with his children…

I’ve made the point before that knowing when and how to delegate is a trait of good leaders. It shows trust in your employees and ensures that you are focusing your own time and skills in your zone of genius — the tasks that only you can do. But I’d like to argue that there are some things that should never be delegated because they will make you too far removed from your team, open you up for criticism, or ultimately paint you in a bad light. If you’ve delegated any of the following tasks, I suggest you move these…

Achieving food and nutrition security today and for a world population that will number more than 9 billion and be 70% urbanized by 2050 is a key global challenge. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, current global trends in incomes, diets and population growth suggest that 60% more food will be needed in 2050. The evidence points to this being achievable, but there are some increasingly urgent pressure points in the system that must be addressed, including depleting water tables, climate change, inadequate infrastructure and reductions in land availability, largely as a result of soil degradation. I am an optimist: I…

What an ongoing struggle it is to get employees to perform. At HR conferences, Vistage and CEO meetings or Organizational Development groups, the topic always seem to be about getting our employees to step up and do great work. In all my years of teaching and consulting around workplace performance, I see three reasons why employees consistently underperform: they are incapable, they are disconnected or they are unclear. Employees are incapable. Employees who are incapable have core abilities that do not align with the abilities required to complete the activities of the job. Every job has very specific activities that…

Entrepreneurship is vital to growing markets. And across most of Europe, entrepreneurship is lacking. In 2013, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that early stage entrepreneurial activity was less than 6% of the population between the working ages of 18-64 in Greece as well as in the four largest economies in Europe—Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. By contrast, BRIC countries and the United States each ranged between 10%-17% in early state entrepreneurial activity. Early stage activity is defined as either actively setting up a new business or owning and managing a new business for less than 42 months. The paucity of…

You’re ready for the job interview or the phone screening call. You’re excited to learn more about the job opportunity. Then the dreaded question comes down: “What were you earning at your last job?” You have to be ready to answer it! I will give you a good answer to that question on one condition: you have to shift your view of the employer-job candidate relationship in order to use the answer I give you. You have to step out of the standard Sheepie Job Seeker frame and realize that you are an equal partner in the hiring process. You…

TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that the upper echelons of top performance are filled with people who are high in emotional intelligence (90% of top performers, to be exact). The hallmark of emotional intelligence is self-control—a skill that unleashes massive productivity by keeping you focused and on track. Unfortunately, self-control is a difficult skill to rely on. Self-control is so fleeting for most people that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed two million people and asked them to rank order their strengths in 24 different skills, self-control ended up in…