Month: November 2025

It’s the easiest shot in golf because you don’t have to hit the ball.

 I perked up when veteran golf pro Tim Katanski said that to me. While I have been playing golf for decades — and, of course, I knew that you don’t strike the ball directly when it’s resting on the sand — I had never heard it expressed so clearly.*

 My point is not to impart a golf lesson. That would be malpractice. [When asked what my “handicap” is, I reply. Myself!] The lesson of the sand shot is to find ways to explicate, elucidate and teach with simplicity. Use similes and metaphors that make the complicated less so and, in the process, make it more accessible.

 Strive for clarity

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” is a phrase attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. As a true Renaissance man – an innovator, scientist, and artist – Leonardo sought to understand the world around him, applying his intellect and talents to interpret what he observed and to devise new methodologies.

 Complexity is the bedevilment of our culture. As the adage goes, it’s easy to make things complicated and more challenging to make them simpler. Simplicity is the act of reduction, not elimination. You want to make what you say understandable to make it easier to comprehend, thereby increasing accessibility and ultimately making it more actionable.

 The challenge for managers is to communicate with clarity and often with brevity.

Consider the following truisms:

 Know your purpose. Find your path.

 Managers mind the details. Leaders inspire their followers.

 Process is a way of doing. Principles are a way of being.

 Discern, decide and delegate.

 One team. One heartbeat.

Create your simple statements

Each one is simple and direct. The secret to formulating your own is to frame your issue. What is happening? What do you need people to do? Why do you need them to do it? For example, your competitor is launching a new product. Formulate your response. Make it short and pithy. “Our edge is the people who build and serve our products.”

 Or budget cuts are challenging. You do more with less. Try this. “Do the best we can with what we have.” It’s not a rah-rah statement; it’s an iteration of reality that frames performance not as a limitation but as an aspiration.

 Simplicity is the essence of knowledge. Striving for it is seldom easy, but achieving it can be rewarding. Just like a well-struck sand shot!

 *Caveat: This instruction applies to greenside sand shots. If the ball is in a fairway bunker – well away from the green — you sweep it out, making direct contact with the ball.

First posted on SmartBrief.com 7.02.2025

James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, which suffered an oxygen tank leak 200 miles from Earth, almost never had the opportunity to fly that mission.

As reporter Russell Lewis of National Public Radio noted in his remembrance of Lovell’s passing, perseverance was his special strength. Lovell did not get into the Naval Academy on his first try. He was later accepted and became a combat fighter pilot and qualified for the test pilot program at Edwards AFB. He did not qualify for the Mercury astronaut program, but was later accepted into the Gemini program. Again, a second try was successful.

Handling adversity

These setbacks steeled James Lovell to be an astronaut who could handle the pressures in times of adversity. Fear was not an option in times of crisis. As Lovell told the New York Times years later, “We were all test pilots, and the only thing we could do was try to get home,” he said to The New York Times in 1995. “The idea of despair never occurred to us, because we were always optimistic we would get home.”

It was this kind of bravery that transfixed the nation and, decades later, after Lovell published his story of the mission, led to a landmark motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks as Lovell.

Crisis leadership and teamwork

One thing Lovell noted about the Apollo 13 mission was NASA’s leadership. It scrambled together ad hoc solutions to engineer fixes that could make the command module safe enough to return to Earth. 

As Lovell told NPR in 2014, Apollo 13 “showed was what you could do with good leadership in an organization, how good leadership fosters teamwork, and how teamwork and initiative, when you faced a problem – to use the initiative or imagination to try to solve the problem because everything doesn’t flow freely in life, and things change.”

Perseverance + Resilience

Perseverance is something that strengthens as we use it—learning from Lovell’s example, when we face obstacles, we do not give up immediately. Learn from what you did and improve when necessary. Perseverance is an attribute of resilience, a must-have for anyone in leadership. 

Resilience emerges, as it did for Lovell, from setbacks. Do not become discouraged. Reflect on your past successes. Self-confidence is honed by achievement. Sometimes achievements come easily, but the ones that require extra effort are those that prepare us to face emerging challenges. 

Although Lovell captained Apollo 8, the first mission to leave Earth’s orbit and circle the Moon, he never achieved his dream of landing on the Moon. Life does not always work out as planned but Lovell made his mark in history by turning disaster into a life-saving mission.

Godspeed, Jim Lovell.

First posted on Forbes.com 8.10.2025

One comment stood out among the avalanche of video clips that media channels played upon the passing of Robert Redford.

An interviewer asked Redford if he were pleased with what he had accomplished.  The actor, then in his eighties, but still maintaining his youthful charm, replied that he was.

Of course, skeptics might say that Robert Redford was a superstar, the kind Hollywood used to have but is less common today. He had been a screen presence for sixty years, starring in such memorable classics as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (with fellow icon Paul Newman) and The Sting (again with Newman). There were also hits like All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor and Out of Africa. 

Branching Out

Redford applied his talents behind the camera, serving as director on Ordinary People (for which he won an Oscar) and  later directing eight other films including A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show and The Horse Whisperer.

Redford once said that if you were a movie star, few would take you seriously. While that may have been the norm for some, it did not apply to him.

Movies were not his only passion. Believing firmly in filmmaking as an art form, he launched the Sundance Film Festival in his adopted home state of Utah. This festival launched landmark films by many who would become major directors, including Quentin Tarantino and Ava DuVernay.

Living as he did in Utah, experiencing nature was paramount, and so he became an ardent environmentalist using his public platform to raise awareness for conservation and preservation of natural wilderness.

Facing adversity

Idyllic, yes, but not always. Redford lost a daughter in infancy, another son, age 58, died of cancer, his daughter experienced a near-death auto accident, and his first marriage ended in divorce. Later, he suffered financial losses and had to sell his stake in Sundance.

In fact, his early life gave no hint of his future. His mother died when he was a teen, and that loss set him somewhat adrift. He earned a baseball scholarship to Colorado but dropped out, in part because he enjoyed partying more than studying. He went to Europe for a year and made a living by selling street drawings. He had a knack for illustration.

Lessons for us

What Redford reminds us is to reflect on what we have accomplished by focusing on what we have done, rather than what we might have done. Take pride in your accomplishments, but do not dwell on them. Continue to pursue new horizons in your life and career. 

Bob Woodward, legendary reporter for the Washington Post and who was portrayed by Redford in All the President’s Men, said, “I loved him, and admired him — for his friendship, his fiery independence, and the way he used any platform he had to help make the world better, fairer, brighter for others.”

Redford persevered, and so his comment about being pleased with what he had accomplished resonates. One commenthe made resonates with those who did not know him in the days of his full stardom.

“I try to avoid giving advice. The only advice I will give is to pay attention. I don’t mean to the screen in your hand.”

In short, life is meant to be lived in reality, not virtually.

First posted on Forbes.com 9.25.2025