In a previous blog, I wrote about the positive effect that extending a small courtesy or accommodation to one’s customers can have in any business, noting how a woman attendant at a gas station had made my day by allowing me inside its convenience store before opening time to brew a cup of tea. But

To believe you can inspire someone at times feels a little arrogant, and so maybe I don’t think about it in quite that way, preferring the idea of providing support and encouragement instead. However, one might regard it, the role of mentor is one I yearn more and more to assume the older I get

“Do Something” was a book I co-authored several years ago after meeting with Syracuse University students who said they were so overwhelmed by responsibilities that they couldn’t be bothered even thinking about the environment. This bothered me enough to explore the question of how anyone preoccupied with other concerns might be persuaded to become involved

On a recent morning I got up early to go to San Diego, leaving my apartment at 5:30 a.m. in hopes of beating the L.A. commuter traffic. While stopping for gas at a Shell station on La Cienega, I thought I’d get some hot water to make a cup of mate tea, but discovered the

Recently I received an email from a young colleague of mine in which he talked about feeling as though he was under water and couldn’t come up for air for a couple of days. When I read this, I recalled something I was told very early in my career by an older and wiser individual:

A couple of days ago I learned that a friend and former colleague of mine, Steve Jacobson, with whom I worked  at Horizon Organic, had died of cancer. Whenever I hear of the passing of anyone I knew, I feel like that individual is sending me a reminder about how brief our time is on

Anyone who’s ever been on a schedule of wall-to-wall meetings knows how after a while it all becomes some kind of crazy blur – how at some point, they all start to run together in your mind, and how easy it can be to confuse the things discussed in one with the gist of another.

Recently, I had the pleasure of escorting an up-and-coming young professional who is just learning the sustainability business on a tour of two facilities that reprocess plastic and rubber. But what made this tour particularly gratifying to me was the mere fact of our being able to take it, and that the individual I was

Before signing off on my latest series of blogs offering readers my recommendations for cultivating business relationships and burnishing one’s professional image, I have one more bit of advice along those lines: never sign off without offering your assistance in some manner. The power of a conversation – especially over the phone — becomes amplified