Dean Brenner

My colleagues and I talk frequently about this blog… how we should use it, what we should write about, how much to share with our readers. And the vast majority of the time, we default to straight business topics, with real anecdotes from real experiences with our clients. This is a business blog, first and […]

Leadership can mean different things at different times to different people. But a few things are non-negotiable. And while sitting on an airplane the other day, I was reading a short essay about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the concept of “transference” came up. The point of the essay was that during his presidency, Roosevelt was not […]

A strange, true, recent and very personal story. The 2016 Olympic Games are underway in Rio, and because of my history with the US Olympic Sailing Program, I am (and always will be) a devoted fan of the Games. I attended two Games (2008 and 2012) as the Team Leader, and I was an alternate […]

  I had a great chat this morning with a partner of The Latimer Group’s. She and I discussed a number of components of great leadership in the 21st century, and one of the ideas we kicked around was the concept of leadership “vulnerability.” I was struck by the idea enough to write a quick post […]

We had a fascinating conversation with a workshop participant last week. He shared a real story, about a presentation he gave soon after he joined his current company. He worked hard at it, he prepared, and he was nervous, but ready. He made the presentation, it seemed to go OK, and then afterwards he asked […]

My colleagues and I see a lot of PowerPoint slide decks. More than we can count, actually. So we have a deep reservoir of context on what makes a good slide deck and a bad slide deck. And very often, people make a critical mistake when thinking about slides, and how to make them better. […]

There has been a lot of chatter lately about work flexibility, the ability to work from home, etc. It’s a great conversation, and figuring this out is critical for most organizations. Each company has to sort out what works, and then develop and maintain a policy that will attract top talent. I’ve been an entrepreneur […]

According to some sources, more than 30 million business presentations are created each day. And you know what? Most of them are terrible. We’ve all sat through the proverbial terrible presentation with no purpose, nothing memorable, no clear action items, too many slides, the monotonous drone of the boring presenter. There is a reason business […]

Did you learn some new things last week? Do you look at the world the same way you did six months ago? Do your business strategy and business goals change over time? In other words, if my knowledge of you and your business is based on where things were for you six months ago, would […]

I spent the last week on vacation with my family. Which means that for a few days prior to the beginning of vacation, my wife and I had our annual negotiation about mobile devices and the boundaries during vacation. In general, she and I agree on the basic premise… it is healthy to turn off […]