Take Our “Why Does This Person Drive Me Crazy?” QUIZ
That person who drives you nuts? They’re the ace up your sleeve. We like to be with people who are similar to us. So we hire people who fit the mold. But here’s the problem: when everyone fits the mold, your organization grows mold. You get stale thinking. Safe ideas. No breakthroughs. The perspectives you […]
Opposites Don’t Attract – And This is a Problem
Contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites do not attract. They detract. They repel. But what if the person who is least like you is the person you need most? I learned this the hard way. I once led a project with a $30M budget, and it failed miserably because my co-leader and the team were too […]
The Five Levels of Personality
Everyone talks about the personality of a person, the individual. But almost everything in an organization has a personality. Teams have personalities. They shape how work gets done, what gets done well, and what gets missed. Meetings have personalities. They reflect what the meeting is designed to do. Many companies have too many of one […]
Find the One Who Drives You Crazy
My most successful project was co-led by someone who drove me crazy. He was my opposite. He was detail-oriented and focused on deliverables, whereas I was driven by novelty and coolness. When I look back, I can see that we didn’t succeed in spite of our differences. We succeeded because of them. When we figured […]
Play to Your Strong Suit
You can’t be great at everything. If you try, you’ll be great at nothing. You want to “play to your strong suit.” These are the traits that give you energy and reflect your superpower. And the cards you don’t have? Those aren’t weaknesses to fix. They’re opportunities for collaboration. *** From “You’re Not Playing with […]
Full Deck Speech Synopsis from Global Innovation Management Institute (GIMI)
I recently delivered a session for members of the Global Innovation Management Institute. After I was done, the Institute pulled together a valuable five-page resource based on my presentation. They did a fantastic job of highlighting some of my key messages, including why: innovation fails when teams think alike diversity alone does not work; the […]
Book Cover – And Subtitle Reveal
On April 21, 2026, my 8th book, You’re Not Playing with a Full Deck, will be published. After months of effort and hundreds of iterations of the cover, I am thrilled to share the final cover and new subtitle for the book. One night, I woke up and realized that being an “ace up the […]
Book Launch April 21
It’s official. April 21, 2026 marks the launch of my 8th book: You’re Not Playing with a Full Deck: Why the People Who Drive You Crazy Also Drive Breakthrough Results I am looking for people who want to help me with the launch. The time commitment is minimal – close to nothing. And it would […]
Article in SHRM Magazine
Most teams don’t struggle because they lack talent. They struggle because they surround themselves with people who think the same way. This was my message to 800 leaders at the SHRM Linkage Institute, where we played Personality Poker. After the event, Olivia Gebreamlak did a great job of capturing the essence of what we explored […]
The Power of Keeping an Open Mind
Two months ago, I set out to transform my 60,000-word Personality Poker book into a Reader’s Digest version—15,000 to 20,000 words with short chapters and detailed action steps. The content was already there. I just needed to update it, cut it down, and make it more actionable. It sounded easy, but it turned out to […]