Dylan Thomas's famous poem, Fern Hill, is based on his childhood experiences on a farm in Wales. The poem is a celebration of the wonder, magic, and joy of this world that many of us experienced and have a hard time remembering as we grow older.

This conversation is about that young child growing older and continuing to see life through his once-child's eyes. The Editor in Chief of Centennial Media, Michelle Stacey, shares her story of helping her Father die while he sings in his chains like the sea. 

“Why would a company hire you before entering a new market in Latin America?”, I asked. “Because if you don’t, you will fail.”

That was powerful. Failure could be death by a thousand cuts, including graft, theft, and kidnapping. How do you navigate the nuances of language, culture, and politics to give your company a fighting chance?

This is a great conversation with a person who is passionate about what he does and powerful in how he communicates data in the written and graphical form.

I give thanks for all of it. Every single breath. Every mistake. Every transgression. Every illness Every disappointment. It is what has defined me, shaped me, and created that wisdom I have today and the wisdom that I will gain in the future. Thanksgiving: the act of giving thanks is such a wonderful gift. I pray you wake up tomorrow with a fulness of heart for who you have been and who you are becoming regardless of circumstance. Amor fati.

When the company’s is relying on you to release the next generation product, when your attempts to help are only perceived as an obstruction, when all your best laid plans are falling apart, you must find a way to move forward. But that step alone could spiral into burnout; a crash that takes you out of the game. Perhaps you are playing the wrong game. We explore a business integration process that was successful and find many of the lessons learned apply to an agile way to stay away from burnout.

Are you willing to die for your convictions? Are your core values aligned with the original core values of your country? Are you fully educated on the meaning and the responsibilities of citizenship? Many have shed blood for you. What is your responsibility in turn? These are just some of the questions I asked myself after listening to Dr. Robert Gates at the International Security Foundation 11th Annual Dinner to celebrate and fund the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) in Washington DC. Enjoy my humble attempt to capture the key ideas in this great conversation.

How do we learn the language of another? How do we study their behaviors to better understand their actions? What is the value of doing these things if you are a cop? Who is your customer? In this great conversation we discover how one Chief of Police seems energized by the opportunity to learn from his customer and create a new value proposition for policing.

Excel is a powerful tool. In the hands of an analyst, it can capture critical data and help executives make important decisions regarding their operation. But, often, the captured data is in the rear-view mirror. There are tools that can be applied to run simulations; what if scenarios, playing with data variabilities. We have a great conversation with a CEO of a data platform company on how we take the analysts model and apply it contextually to each member of the C-Level Suite and be able to take all the contextualized inputs and outputs and roll them up to a more wholistic view of the business’s future. If this can be done, we are then providing another way to navigate risk and opportunity. That is a great conversation.

In the not-too-distant future, an FBI agent is forced to pair with an artificial intelligence (AI) "robot." to solve a crime. The future has not been kind to us. Crisis upon crisis has torn the country apart. Polarization of the body politic, pandemic politics, climate crisis, energy crisis, etc. created a future that is readily accessible in our imagination. This is the book Burn-In. And that’s the secret of this author and his organization, Useful Fiction, LLC, and his books.

Enjoy the science of story and why our government and commercial business leaders need to read more “useful fiction”.

Who you are and how you show up depends on your ability to know your core values and your purpose. This should be infused in your life and your business. But many people struggle to capture this and, more importantly, articulate it when they are initiating relationships. In this conversation we seek the wisdom from a global expert on the path to credibility.

CEOs navigate risk and opportunity to generate value for their customers, employees, and their investors. They must have functional roles at the table who understand how to make that happen. Embedded in every role the CEO creates is the notion of risk. The executive who intimately knows risk and how to apply it to each functional role has the keys to the value proposition of the business. Welcome to a conversation that moves from lobbying for a title and redirects it to a value path for the next generation security leader.

Many of us stay at the surface in our relationships. Many of us ask questions but can’t wait for the answer. There are many levels to a person. The great leaders find a way to ask a series of questions, mining the answers, seeking the truth. Our great conversation is with a life-long “teller” addict who now is a listener. And he has learned the art of the question to mine for the gold in his relationships.

Do you know where you are going? Do you have a fundamental grasp of who you are and how you show up with your family, your peers, and your friends? Is it time to create a compass for your life? This conversation is about that journey. Welcome to Living Life on Purpose.

Leading is the active best practice of caring. It is essential to engagement with the people within and without the organization. It is essential to self-worth. And it is essential to innovation because innovation happens at the speed of trust. Our great conversation is with a person who deeply understands this and is committed to helping us hardwire it into our very being.

So much goes on that we do not see. Lurking below the surface may be things that unsettle us. And they may be impacting our lives and those around us. This must be understood by leaders of organizations. According to Gallup, an actively disengaged employee costs their organization $3,400 for every $10,000 of salary, or 34 percent. That means an actively disengaged employee who makes $60,000 a year costs their company $20,400 a year!

We clearly have to navigate the risk and opportunity of this problem. Our conversation with this executive may show us the way.

We all have a way of thinking and being that can get trapped in a way of seeing the world and our role in it. The trap is set by how we are taught and what we have learned. But there is a way of seeing the world that helps avoid this trap. Our conversation with this executive for a major food manufacturer, gives us a glimpse to a journey that helps us understand the nature of inquiry and the power it has in seeing “beyond the fenceline”.

Life is a series of interactions between worldviews. Worldviews are identity. They represent core values; a way of seeing and understanding the world passed down from individual stories through a Darwinian shaping and trimming process that helps us feel safe, secure, and confident as we navigate our world.

In this great conversation, we explore “narrative” as a mean of describing how people and nations might build bridges of understanding that might take us to a different place than conflict and war.

I also saw it as a means of deeply investing in another as we build companies of strategic and purposeful value.

Enjoy the conversation!

There are so many unintended consequences for reacting to a situation too quickly without understanding how it started and how it evolved. What if we started with a premise that everyone was essentially good, but had the potential to do evil things? What if we understood the logic ladder of their thinking that led them down a pathway to violence? What if we saw that pathway starting with a cry for help through words or behavior? In this great conversation we learn from the former Chief Psychologist of the Secret Service what that pathway is and how to leverage it to help someone before they harm someone else.

To create value, a leader has to invest in people. Learn their stories; their skillsets; their worldviews. And then they must act in the role of puzzle maker. Taking each of their people and forging a team. Then each person is highly leveraged. The sum of the parts is greater than any individual contributor. In this great conversation, you will hear a leader’s path to developing such a team.

Imagine your company is the leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This is a platform that aggregates all the data around the primary relationships that drive successful outcomes with potential and existing customers. And this drives the business. Now replace CRM with Security. Give it a platform that aggregates and leverages the data that influences the safety and security of all the people attempting to serve the mission of the business. This too, drives the business. This is a great conversation around a leadership team that is navigating risk and opportunity for competitive advantage.

We are in tomorrow. Although the present occupies most of our attention. Tomorrow is not friendly. It may be hopeful, but it laughs at our comfort for today. Whether it is our skill sets, our position, or the spaces in which we all live and work, tomorrow will disrupt all of them. In this great conversation, we explore this with a man who is helping shape your future places in which you work.