Since starting my own business as a leadership coach, I’ve spoken with a lot of folks who are at a crossroads in their careers. Should they become a manager, or should they continue to pursue excellence in their craft? Are those paths mutually exclusive? If not, how can they do both?

For many, this can be a very nebulous, stressful decision. There are only a few people I’ve spoken with who’ve known without a shadow of a doubt which path they wanted to take (I was not one of them, surprisingly).

The scenario is all too familiar. Company leaders talk about total quality management, downsizing, or customer value. Determined managers follow up with plans for process improvements in customer service, manufacturing, and supply chain management, and for new organizations to fit the new processes. From subordinates, management looks for enthusiasm, acceptance, and commitment. But it gets something less. Communication breaks down, implementation plans miss their mark, and results fall short. This happens often enough that we have to ask why, and how we can avoid these failures.

IRC has been used for 30 years. Did you know that it was developed at the University of Oulu?

Time is nobody’s friend. Authors in particular can fall afoul of time—all it takes is a few years out of the limelight. Publishers will let their books fall out of print; readers will forget about them. Replace “years” with “decades” and authors can become very obscure indeed.

As climate change accelerates, a handful of scientists are eager to move ahead with experiments testing ways to counteract warming artificially. Their reasoning: we just might get desperate enough to use this technology one day.