What Executive Leaders Can Learn from Fly Fishing Tangles

What Executive Leaders Can Learn from Fly Fishing Tangles

Last summer, we took a road trip from San Francisco, through Zion, Bryce, and on to Telluride, Colorado. While in Telluride, we took a fly fishing lesson from Marty at Telluride Fly Fishers. Marty was a great guide and very patient with this city girl! I had piled on several layers of clothes in anticipation of wide temperature swings in the Rockies.

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Night of the Living Dead, VUCA, and Strangling Tangles – Revisited
crisis, strangling tangles, VUCA Guest User crisis, strangling tangles, VUCA Guest User

Night of the Living Dead, VUCA, and Strangling Tangles – Revisited

This past Halloween, my husband and I locked ourselves in our darkened home and watched a DVD of Night of the Living Dead. I had never seen it before and to be honest, I can’t say that I truly watched the whole thing. I spent part of the movie hidden under a blanket! If you haven’t seen it before, it contains some very gruesome scenes. However, as your intrepid Tangle Doctor, I couldn’t help see applications for saving corporate America form their own nights of the living dead.

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US Airways Captain Sullenberger, Leaders, and Strangling Tangles

US Airways Captain Sullenberger, Leaders, and Strangling Tangles

On January 15, 2009, US Airways flight 1549 took off from New York's La Guardia Airport. By all accounts, this was a routine takeoff, like many that occur day in and day out. However, on this particular flight, something unexpected occurred that required leadership, quick thinking, and skill. The plane hit a flock of birds, disabling both engines. Captain Chesley Sullenberger III deftly guided the plane for a safe landing in the Hudson. All the passengers survived. This miraculous story offers great insight for leaders who want to avoid catastrophes, or what I call Strangling Tangles. A Strangling Tangle is a complex business challenge, further complicated by messy human dynamics that leads to a precipitous drop in revenue or even business failure.

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