The majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.

Life is full of surprises: new opportunities come up; that's part of the fun - the adventure of life. The thing is, chaos doesn't allow us to enjoy the adventure.

When leaders throughout an organization take an active, genuine interest in the people they manage, when they invest real time to understand employees at a fundamental level, they create a climate for greater morale, loyalty, and, yes, growth.

Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.

The kind of people that all teams need are people who are humble, hungry, and smart: humble being little ego, focusing more on their teammates than on themselves. Hungry, meaning they have a strong work ethic, are determined to get things done, and contribute any way they can. Smart, meaning not intellectually smart but inner personally smart.

Teamwork requires some sacrifice up front; people who work as a team have to put the collective needs of the group ahead of their individual interests.

If you could get all the people in the organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

Not many foreigners move to Paris for their dream job. Many do it on a romantic whim.

Even for natives, French satire is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Its unspoken punch line is typically that things have gone irrevocably wrong, and the government is to blame.

The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?'

A lot of French comedy is satire.

I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other.

Soccer may not explain the world or even contain the world. But it makes the world a slightly happier place.

While I love walking past those beautifully lit bookstores in my neighborhood, what I mostly buy there are blank notebooks and last-minute presents for children's birthdays.

One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves.

I'm a third-generation Miamian. I'm fond of it. I'm an expatriate, so it's the only American city I can still legitimately claim.

Like practically everyone who grew up in Miami, I knew little about its history. We were more worried about mangoes falling on our cars.

When I left for college, I put Miami behind me and tried to have a life of the mind. I got a graduate degree. I traveled. I even married a fellow writer, whose only real estate was a dingy one-bedroom apartment in Paris, where we lived.

If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami.

Your child probably won't get into the Ivy League or win a sports scholarship. At age 24, he might be back in his childhood bedroom, in debt, after a mediocre college career. Raise him so that, if that happens, it will still have been worth it.

French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

I always knew the French had a penchant for criticism and abstract thought. Usually, that just meant they complained a lot.

Earnestness makes British people gag.