What can we learn from Elon Musk?Probably the main lesson is that there are few better ways to brand a business than by having a strong sense of mission. | Continue reading
I had everything I thought I wanted…and I hated it. I hated (almost) every minute of it. The fakeness, the toxicity, the dehumanizing grind of it all. | Continue reading
Here you have it: “Four Leadership Mindsets Driving the New Economy.” Producers. Investors. Connectors. Explorers. Make of it what you will. | Continue reading
No, it means that we are inherently social, giving creatures, and when we make it all about ourselves, we defy our own nature. | Continue reading
Apparently, not only do happy employees work longer hours, they’re more productive in the hours that they’re *not* working longer. Double win. | Continue reading
Trust. Without it, nothing holds together. As Socrates noted, even thieves have to trust one another in order to pull off a heist. | Continue reading
The more (and sooner) you treat it like a job, and not some airy-fairy, arty-farty thing, the happier you will be. That’s pretty much how the game works. | Continue reading
What we meant by that was, rather than just seeking a short-term transactional relationship with the general public, advertising could be used to make the client’s people feel far more connected with their employer and its mission. | Continue reading
How much does it cost Blue Apron to land a new customer? About $500. How much is an average customer worth? About $400 in the lifetime of the relationship. Blue Apron loses $100 on every customer. | Continue reading
The tendency to believe that what is, is good; therefore, what is, is what ought to be. The moralistic fallacy is the opposite. It refers to the leap from ought to is. To claim that the way things should be is the way they are. | Continue reading
We’re in the fast lane. We work long hours, we live in big cities, we’re going to parties, we travel, we raise kids, we’re doing Crossfit, we’re running triathlons, we like restaurants, bars & shows, we’re traveling to Europe and Asia on business, we’ve got side hustles going on. | Continue reading
How do you balance freedom and responsibility?Transparency, says Forbes.But we say it’s more than transparency: it’s trust. | Continue reading
When was the last time you saw a business disaster? Cutting-edge research shows that such problems usually result from poor strategic decisions when we go with our gut | Continue reading
So why do people fail? Well, there are many reasons (lack of work ethic, underfunding, overfunding, an abundance of cluelessness, just plain bad luck, etc.) but one of the main reasons, I think, is they stack the numbers against themselves in the first place. | Continue reading
Thanks to Victorian scientific ideas about work (aka “Taylorism”), conventional bosses tend to see their employees’ work as running forty-hour marathons.Whereas the reality is, people create value in very short, creative bursts. | Continue reading
Before he hires anyone, the first thing Bob does is take the person out to dinner at a fancy restaurant.Bob slips the maî·tre d' a few twenties, to make sure the waiter gets some of the orders wrong. Bob wants to see how the person treats the waiter in less than ideal circumstanc … | Continue reading
Author Whitney Johnson, speaks of our unsung “super-powers” that can drive both career disruption and growth. | Continue reading
The interesting thing is when you look at the way the advertising business works, the “Why” is never “Why are we in business?”, or “Why should the client’s product exist?” | Continue reading
The great 90’s feminist writer, the late Cynthia Heimel, once made a lovely point about moving to Hollywood from New York.And her point was, that in Hollywood, no one has real conversations. | Continue reading
But eventually everybody, I believe, needs to set an example. Either to your kids or to your friends or to your spouse or to your peers or to the world in general. | Continue reading
There’s a great line in hiking circles: “Backpacking is the art of knowing what NOT to take.”When you go out camping in the wilderness, you have to carry everything with you on your back. | Continue reading
All work, and all life exist within an imperfect space.Showrunning a drama series means Embracing the Imperfect as a way of life. | Continue reading
People don’t innovate (“Thrive” mode) when they’re scared. Instead, they keep their heads down (“Survive” mode). | Continue reading
that weird, irrational part of ourselves that we define ourselves, is much more irrational and emotional, therefore harder to commodify. | Continue reading
There’s been a lot of fuss in business lately about Big Data.With Big Data, suddenly it’s possible to know everything. Hurrah!!! | Continue reading
Quite often you’d book a meeting room for an important client, and none of the computers would work (and this was when computers were simple). | Continue reading
Humility is a lot easier to bear once you know what it’s for, once you know WHO it’s for. | Continue reading
Any executive these days will tell you, “Diversity and Inclusion” is a big deal. It's foolish to pretend otherwise, it’s not a fad and it’s not going away. | Continue reading
We all have to submit our copy to someone else: a creative director, an editor, a client, legal compliance. | Continue reading
Actually, you’re selling both. You’re selling the concrete (insurance) and you’re selling the abstract (peace of mind). | Continue reading
“Meaning scales” is a phrase we’ve been using regularly since 2004.Basically, it means you don’t have to be a billionaire or a celebrity or a “Master of the Universe” in order to have a great career. | Continue reading
HOWEVER, I will try to impart to you some advice that EVERY American college kid should take seriously, but most ignore to their peril:And that advice is: LEARN TO WRITE PROPERLY. | Continue reading
One of the best things I’ve read in the last ten years was this wonderful 2010 blog post by Clay Shirky on complex business models | Continue reading
How much force is needed to really move a body to a new reality? Watching a rocket leave its launch pad gives us an idea. | Continue reading
After reading this article, “3 Ways to Build a Culture of Collaborative Innovation” it made us think...The thing is, most successful companies are exactly that: Cultures of Collaborative Innovation. | Continue reading
Robert Louis described this phenomenon in a brief but brilliant aphorism: “Public virtue, private vice.” | Continue reading
There’s a common meme doing the rounds- the idea that “People don’t want stuff, they want experiences”.Welcome to the age of “Living Fully”. | Continue reading
Another one to file under “Everything you thought was right is wrong”:Apparently, “Experience Doesn’t Predict a New Hire’s Success”. | Continue reading
I have said, in various contexts, that I would have to kill myself if I couldn't write. That isn't hyperbole. | Continue reading
"If you want to get a competitive edge over your classmates, try joining the debating society." | Continue reading
In business, the natural response is often to make things EVEN MORE complicated than they need to be. | Continue reading
Back in the Soviet Union, ball bearings were a big deal.You see, as a general rule, the more industrial machines you were building, the more ball bearings you needed to use in the machines. So the number of ball bearings being made was considered a good indicator of how well the … | Continue reading
Do you remember the moment you chose to tune out everything and everyone around you to pay more attention to what’s happening behind the screen? | Continue reading
n Medieval Europe, the trade guilds had three ranks: The Apprentice. 2. The Journeyman. 3. The Master. | Continue reading
Marcus Engman, the head designer of Ikea these last six years, just quit to go and start his own consultancy.His big idea? To convince clients to spend less money on marketing, and spend it more on where it matters: Design. | Continue reading
There’s a rather common belief that success is the precursor to virtue, not the other way around. | Continue reading
When we think of the world, we mostly think of “countries” being the basic unit of mass human organization. | Continue reading