I’m at the Global Leadership Conference yesterday and today. I love hearing great speakers give their best performances, then thinking deeply about their insights. Yes, I feel too busy with other work to be there, but leaders need to take time to learn and think.

Here are a couple of useful insights I gleaned:

1. Understand that most new initiatives fail (the Parable of the Sower had a 75% seed failure rate), but great growth only comes from sowing more seeds. So learn to accept some failure and start more initiatives, though make sure to measure results early and often.
2. Leaders most valuable asset isn’t their time, it’s their energy and where they choose to invest it.
3. When things are tough, people become more of who they are. So work to understand your strategic partners, because things will get tough.
4. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
5. “Good intentions are no excuse for incompetence.” Peter Drucker
6. If you’re not dead, you’re not done.

So what issues are you struggling with? What improvements do you want to make? What might get you there? If you’re not thinking these or similar questions, why not? Don’t sleepwalk through life to get to death safely. Live all in, put it on the line and have some fun.