The business world is full of similar examples of company’s unwilling to face reality and get out ahead of a trend. Why? It is human nature. Once a person gets settled in a rhythm, they have a very difficult time convincing themselves that there is a better way to do things.

The most fundamental rule of business is to appropriately support and grow the going business, while you independently pursue new initiatives to drive the business further. The second activity should not get in the way of the first. Pepsi violated this rule big time by massively under-supporting it’s beverage business over the past few years. It is reported that PepsiCo needs to spend $580 million more on beverage marketing support in 2012 to be competitive.

There is nothing a leader should fear more than not being trusted. Lack of trust makes leading impossible. How do you lose people’s trust? Easy…you lie, exaggerate the positive and downplay the negative, blame others when problems are your responsibility, and most importantly, you don’t deliver what you promise. Given that list, it is easy to see why Washington DC is not trusted.

Successful leaders have laser-like focus on priorities. Ongoing responsibilities are carried out as efficiently as possible, leaving time to focus on the one or two change efforts designed to significantly improve things. To achieve this, you can’t be a slave to gadgets.

The great leader is typically very enthusiastic but also quite skeptical when things don’t make sense or numbers don’t match points of view, plans or specific objectives.

Did you ever have a boss you just couldn’t please? Pretty soon you start doubting your approaches, and often walk away from your strengths in an effort to guess what will be acceptable. Conversely, it is great to have a boss that you know inherently trusts you and believes you can do great work. You tend to trust your instincts, seize opportunities, and go the extra mile, causing your performance to be much better in that environment.

The Samsung Galaxy S II, which I have fallen in love with, is equivalent to having in my pocket a powerful pc driven by a dual-core processor, an iPod, an e-book reader, a high-definition video recorder, a phone, and a small high-definition tv!

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson points out the incredible focus of Jobs, noting: “Instead of encouraging each group to let product lines proliferate based on marketing considerations, or permitting a thousand ideas to bloom, Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time.” Additionally, a clear takeaway from the book was the incredible rudeness of Jobs, and rudeness is putting it mildly, as he strived for absolute excellence.

People who worked closely with Steve Jobs referred to his creation of “reality distortion fields;” demanding an outcome that looked impossible to achieve, but then sometimes actually achieving it. The co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak described the term vividly: “Jobs’ reality distortion is when he has an illogical vision of the future, such as telling me that I can design a game in just a few days. You realize it can’t be true, but he somehow makes is true.”

We read a lot last month about the shameful leadership of Francesco Schettino, the Costa Concordia cruise ship captain who steered his vessel into risky, uncharted waters and then abandoned ship when it ran aground. The saga continued to play out last week when a group of survivors filed a hefty lawsuit claiming gross negligence [...]