The first step to creating a more effective organization is determining how to deploy your resources. There are no exceptions. Consider the following:

Editors Note: My still-dear friend, John Zingg, and I played and sang this song (and many others) for spending cash in college and so it has always had a special place in my heart. But it became more when I learned recently that McCartney actually wrote it as a metaphor for the African-American struggle that was gaining ground at the time he wrote this in the late 1960s. The words now make the simple, lovely guitar even more beautiful.

Editor's Note: Drawing on the entrepreneurial life-lessons he gained from his Uncle Cleve, Who Owns the Icehouse? chronicles Clifton Taulbert’s journey from life in the Mississippi Delta at the height of legal segregation to being recognized by Time Magazine as “one of our nations most outstanding emerging entrepreneurs.” While Taulbert describes the life-changing influence of his Uncle Cleve, Gary Schoeniger, founder of Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI), captures the entrepreneurial life-lessons and the unlimited opportunities they can provide.

Editor’s note: While this article appears to be an advertisement for hiring a business coach, its point is too good to pass up. The five reasons CEOs avoid coaching are the five reasons all of us do. I’ve seen this over and over in the leaders I work with and, sadly from time to time in myself.

It was 1988 and I was out of a job. And I was running out of time to provide for my young family of five. When I told people I’m opening a consulting company named Contract Marketing most responses were “great, just what the world needs – another out of work guy posing as a consultant.”

Editor’s Note: Given the racial tensions building in our cities between imperfect police forces and imperfect legal systems, I noticed this, one of my favorite old blues songs on my iPhone the other day. This early 2000’s version of an old Ray Charles tune says it all.  

Editor’s note: Dr. Deaton, a social economist from Princeton who is widely respected uses this readable book to separate health and income’s effects on global life quality. He is brave enough to go way back and way forward in sharing his thought and all of his present and past observations are well researched and documented. Late in his thesis he says (my favorite seven words in the book) that we should worry about “equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.” His overall findings, if summarized from my reading would be that we’ve had huge progress in spreading (health and income) life quality over the last 150 years but that we may not do as well going forward. Essentially he is optimistic about the past and somewhat pessimistic about our future and while he cites good reasons to be skeptical, I’m hoping his warnings are observed and considered but not believed or accepted.  

Editor’s note: How fun it is to make my article of the month a local news item about our MD, Bill Leamon’s work in the area of social enterprise! Enjoy.

The most underutilized asset of ANY organization is their database.

Editor’s Note: This is the book I would be able to write if I had 10 times the experience I have at this time. Every interest I’ve had, it seems, is covered by this famous reporting couple. The thorough nature of their approach in fact makes it informative and helpful to a neophyte like me but also a bit weighty if you are more casual in your interest. Kristoff and WuDunn take account of an amazing number of vignettes of successful and unsuccessful efforts to stem poverty and its root causes here in America and throughout the world. In the same book, they also study the science of both giving and receiving. Finally, they cover measuring impact. For me it was well worth the slog and even if others are overwhelmed by it, the book adds fame and practical knowledge to this emerging social change society we are growing together.