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Legal protections and the threat of financial damages clearly were not enough to prevent the recent catastrophic explosions on the BP deep-sea rig and in Massey Coal’s doomed mine.

Initially, the penalties imposed on BP were said to be limited to $75 million, a pittance compared to the vast wealth of sea-bottom treasure anticipated by successful drilling. In the case of Massey Coal, the company successfully contested fines and inspections, allowing them to reduce the cost of compliance while sowing the seeds of catastrophe.

In both of these tragedies, these organizations apparently had a distorted view of risk management. They apparently assumed that the risks of change, financial, operational, efficiency and others outweighed the costs and losses of less rigorous and, likely, legally mandated measures.

I just read and watched William Shakespeare’s history play, Henry V. The story tells how Henry V led his Army through France in 1415, defeating a much larger force at Agincourt.

Bad doctors lose patients they shouldn’t, cause avoidable complications, distract team members who may deliver the wrong medication, or cause others to keep quiet when they should speak up about problems. I’m not talking about physicians who lack clinical skills, though some may. Rather, these bad docs may have great and even extraordinary talents. But they scream, berate, physically intrude, threaten, and demean team members – including other physicians, nurses, and other professionals – so abusively and repetitively that patient care may suffer as much as from acts of technical incompetence.

Tiger Woods is in sex rehab, Jay Leno is returning to Tonight, Curt Schilling loves the Yankees, and Johnson and Johnson is charged with kickbacks and failure to address product safety issues.

My friend will lose his job soon – like too many others already have in this cruel, exhausting recession.

Tiger Woods has been the premier sports brand for the past several years. We’ve wanted our businesses to perform like he plays golf, our kids to behave the way he acts, and our commitment and intensity to approach his impossible standards.

I’ve wondered when it would happen – for years there have been stories of athletes, proxies for other celebrities, who say and do what they want while their behavior is ignored, minimized, or attributed to “locker room” humor or conduct.

David Letterman is lucky. Some may question how that can be when his private affairs, literally, are now so public. And some may say, if he can do it and keep his job, so can I.

I just returned from a fantastic bike trip in France with my daughter, Rebecca, and my first cousin Craig, her godfather. We biked along the coast of Normandy and saw where our courageous soldiers stormed the treacherous beachheads to begin the D-Day invasion.

I recently facilitated a session for senior leaders of a public utility. In all ways, they were confident that they successfully lived by their values, with one exception: accountability.

In late October, I had the privilege of speaking to 300 leaders employed by the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in Nova Scotia.

This past May, I traveled with an ELI team to Glasgow, Scotland, to conduct a pilot session for a new client with offices in the U.S., Asia, and Europe.

A few months ago, I was in Belgium helping a U.S.-based client with a global mission...

The 2008 SHRM conference held in the windy city of Chicago was a glowing success.

Last Friday I dead-lifted 260 pounds. In other words, I picked up a 45-pound bar with 107.5 pounds attached to each end and stood it straight up. It was heavy. It was also one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my life.

I’ve thought a lot about leadership over the past few years – it’s what every firm says it needs to build better, more efficient, inclusive ethical and lawful workplaces. Go to any bookstore and the shelves will be lined with first-person or biographical accounts of epic leaders –Washington, Lincoln, King, Patton, Schwarzkopf, Welch, Jobs, Gates. Those leaders are few and far between, and most of us read about them hoping to find nuggets of wisdom we can apply.

The Falcons are 3-11 having just lost to Tampa Bay. They may well lose the rest of their games -- an awful season. But the wins and losses are not what will be remembered.

I just got back from a long roadtrip from Atlanta to Boston to New York to Atlanta. Like just about everyone else I saw, I carried my version of the necessary road warrior package – a laptop, Blackberry/cell phone, ipod, and camera, plus separate chargers for each.

The New York Times Test is mentioned often in the context of corporate misbehavior.