One of life’s greatest pleasures is learning new things.  In the chaos of today’s business world, we are deluged by infinite gigs of information, ideas, emails, books, articles, and new concepts… 24/7. It’s hard to judge what’s good and what’s not, which is why I trust my colleague from Singapore who I co-delivered a powerful GROW Coaching business simulation program with this week in China.

One of the many amazing impacts that come from the current strength of the U.S. economy and the historically low unemployment levels is the fact that with more people working there are also more new leaders in the workforce than ever before as well.  Some of the new leaders have been promoted because they are ready, and some of them have been promoted because too many businesses are so desperate for managers, they have no choice.

When I first heard that Martin Scorsese’s new instant-classic movie, “The Irishman” was over three and a half hours long it reminded me of the good old days of training when you had five days to tell a story and help participants develop the skills and tools they need to be more effective. But like many longer movie classics those days are long gone, replaced by requests for shorter training programs, self-paced learning, and short bursts of experiential learning that can be accomplished as quickly as possible.

For most business leaders, nothing is easy. Success comes as a result of a unique strategic business plan, great people, and flawless execution. There are many controllable and uncontrollable variables that go into those three things and the best leaders in the world can find the right balance and consistency over time to be successful.

Thanksgiving is the great American holiday where family and friends share time with each other andtake time to show genuine thanks and gratitude for all the things we have in our lives like health, food, freedom, and opportunities to prosper.  Whatever your politics are this Thanksgiving, the facts are clear that there are more American working – 132,000,000 of us - than ever before in the history of the country and the unemployment rate is at a record low of 3.6%.  Compare that to the post-recession rate of 10.0% at Thanksgiving 2009 and you realize we have a new generation of employees and leaders who have never know anything but good times.