So what is the real reason more women aren't running big businesses? In their unguarded moments, some male execs and business owners may tell you: It's because they have babies. Sure, women are talented and driven, but these men will say: When women have babies, they take time out of the workforce which is...

Is Jack Welch, the former General Electric CEO, a timeless seer or an out-of-date warhorse? The Wall Street Journal recently posed that question, but the the answer is simple: He's an out-of-date warhorse. The occasion for the question was a Journal-sponsored conference on Women in the Economy. Welch doesn't...

To understand all the consequences of an important choice takes time and attention -- even if both are hard to come by. I've written before about the importance of sleep. Tired brains lose their capacity to think critically, to evaluate data, and to understand the meaning of evidence. But chronic fatigue in...

Working overtime doesn't increase your output. It makes you stupid. Many of us still imagine that the more we work, the more productive we are. For over a hundred years or more, this has been deemed nonsense.

I'm a big fan of mistakes. In business, as in life, mistakes are how we learn. As infants, we learned to walk by falling over. We acquired speech by speaking gobbledygook that eventually evolved into language. And yet, when we grow up, we often become strangely awkward about our missteps. It's no accident...

"What time do you want me to start work?" That's the question a new hire recently asked me. She looked a little startled by my reply. "I don't care." But it was the truth. I didn't care-and I never have-what hours are kept by the people who work for me. You could say I'm the opposite of a control freak,...