I am sure you heard this phrase somewhere.

Perhaps, in a strange-looking yoga magazine.

Perhaps, in a shiny Hollywood movie.

Perhaps, some podcast on spiritual matters or Vudu magic was playing on the background.

But at risk of losing all my academic and sound data-loving-businesswoman credibility, let me use this phrase as well.


Thoughts create reality.

Now that the hard part is out of the way, let me explain what I mean.

(No, no witchcraft spells will be dropped here, it's much more straightforward than that.)

Our thoughts - the fundamental believes we have about something - define how we behave, make decisions, allocate resources.


Take, for example, our thoughts and believes about change.

If you believe that change happens rarely, you will act very differently than if you believe that change is a regular event - just as if you believe that snow happens every 50 years, you will act very differently than if you think it comes every winter. 

If snow (and...

I am sitting in my dark cozy room in Fontainebleau, France, drinking tea, coughing like crazy (I've been on a road and rather sick), and thinking of you.


Most likely you and I've never met.

Most likely you are one of those amazing people who connected online and decided to stay around.

So, I don't have the luxury of knowing your story, learning from you, seeing you laugh out loud.


Scientists still don't really understand why being connected to others makes such a difference to human beings.

After all, it's a dog eat dog world and survival of the fittest (especially when we do come from different tribes) should make competition - not cooperation - the best biological weapon.

Yet, a 2011 study shoes that positive social relationships awake the neurobiological endogenous opioid system (that stuff in our brains that literally works like opium).

In 2015 researchers discovered that connecting to others prevents heart...

 It’s time for some real talk.

But first, let me set the stage.

I first asked this question during an Executive MBA course I was teaching about a decade ago.

The room was filled with experienced professions who really had some mileage behind them.

So, imagine my surprise, when my question was met with absolute I-don’t-know-what-to-say silence.

No, I was not asking about anything private, weird, or inappropriate.

All I asked was this:

What value have you created last week?

Not your company. Not your business unit. You.

Simple question, right?

So it’s so remarkable how many of us have trouble with the answer.

We adore our product and services, we love or hate our processes, we celebrate or cry over our financial results… But value… That seems very abstract.

Yet, without a real grasp of value creation, reinvention is not possible – it’s all about new and improved ways of creating value.

And that’s...

Our team at Chief Reinvention Officer had a big September.

First, I made a trip around the world (Columbus - Toronto - Frankfurt - Nur Sultan - Seoul - Vancouver - Chicago - Columbus.... Even typing it up makes me dizzy!)

Then we launched the Fall 2019 Class of our foundations-of-reinvention course. (All those emails. Yes, we are done. Back to weekly articles!)

Then we started our own company reinvention - our quest for better team flow, better tech, better value for all of you...


So, when the idea came up to hold our next big strategic discussion while taking a walk at a beautiful park, I jumped. 

What can be better than talking about letting go of no-longer-useful ideas while watching the trees letting go of their leaves?!

So, here we were, turning a corner of the park, talking about our mission - about the shift required in how we manage our organizations to meet the challenges of speed and uncertainty.

I am in my normal all-knowing preachy self, talking a lot.

...