Objections are healthy. When someone is being offered a new opportunity or product, it's not unusual for there to be objections. These are issues, the missing feature or unwanted element that's keeping us from saying, "yes." On the other hand,... | Continue reading
When you buy a glass of wine at a nice restaurant, it doesn't come in a beer stein. If it did, the 4 ounces would be dwarfed by the glass and you'd feel like your host was ungenerous. Closets, it... | Continue reading
...it only takes a few minutes. Because it's not a breakthrough. Breakthroughs are slow because you don't know how to do it... Re-creation is fast, because you already know how. The art of the breakthrough is the practice of figuring... | Continue reading
Most new projects fall into one of three categories: You might seek to defeat the market leader, to enter as a challenger alternative. Your goal here is to cause someone to switch. Or you might seek to defend yourself against... | Continue reading
For a generation after people realized that smoking would kill them, many smart, informed people still smoked. Then, many of them stopped. After discovering that an expensive luxury good is made out of the same materials as a cheaper alternative,... | Continue reading
The tension of how it might turn out. The tension of possibility. The tension of change. Telegrams used to charge by the word. Say what you need to say, there you go. But stories... stories work because we're not sure.... | Continue reading
What does it mean to 'try your best'? Or to put more effort into something than other organizations do? We often talk about trying, about effort and 110%, but it's mostly glib. The fact is, very few of us try... | Continue reading
I love books. A perfected technology that's five hundred years old, a chance to hold and share and actually feel the weight of an idea. Here's a new project we've been working on: Four years ago we produced the Behemoth,... | Continue reading
An anonymous friend sends you two tickets to Hamilton, showing on Broadway tomorrow night. On your way to the show, someone offers you $2,000 for the tickets. If you don't take the money and go to the show instead, how... | Continue reading
Take a time-traveling Ben Franklin for a ride in your Prius and you'll give him a heart attack. Meanwhile, you're driving down the highway while eating a muffin and texting at the same time. We can clearly get used to... | Continue reading
Every busy person has a pile. That's what makes them busy. And few busy people show up at work eagerly seeking more stuff they can add to the pile. Which means that when you interrupt a busy person with your... | Continue reading
Do you click through to see the underlying data? Are you aware of both the status quo and the argument against it? Have you done the reading? Are you comfortable asking, "why?" Do you know how it works? When someone... | Continue reading
Where did all the good jobs go? They didn’t head to other countries or even down the street. The good jobs I’m talking about are the ones that our parents were used to. Steady, consistent factory work. The sort of... | Continue reading
No one says, "I'm going to be unfair to this person today, brutal in fact, even though they don't deserve it or it's not helpful." Few people say, "I know that this person signed the contract and did what they... | Continue reading
Some people go through their day unaware that every action they pursue has more than its obvious intent. A glance is worth a thousand words. Asking for the check can be like a standing ovation--or a put down. A handshake... | Continue reading
Is there any other form of freedom that comes at such a low cost? The freedom to change a habit, to change your mind, to change your expectations. It takes guts and humility to change your mind. Fortunately, you have... | Continue reading
Day after day, year after year, it's the interactions we have at home that have the biggest impact on who we become. Public school is an essential part of our culture. But the inputs and foundations that parents create are... | Continue reading
Organized bureaucracies thrive on compliance. It makes it easier to tell people what to do. But contribution is the only way that tribes thrive, the best way to make change happen and the essence of being part of a community.... | Continue reading
A friend, commenting on a new building, "I’m not sure if I hate it or love it! I want to hate it but I think I love it..." Without that tension, all you've done is what's been done before. | Continue reading
How did Bernie Madoff do it? How did he steal twenty billion dollars from people who should have known better? It doesn't matter if you went to university or not--you can still be played as a chump. To pull off... | Continue reading
Consider a race to the top. How can Lyft possibly compete with Uber? Scale is often the secret to a commodity business, and if Lyft races to be ever cheaper than Uber, the only possible outcome doesn’t look good. It's... | Continue reading
Doubt is corrosive. Someone faced with doubt rarely brings her best self to the table. Doubt undermines confidence, it casts aspersions, it assumes untruths. Yes, of course you need to qualify your leads. And yes, we know that you need... | Continue reading
Shannon Weber decided that there wasn't enough love, recognition or connection in her world, so she did something about it. When she finds an unsung (don't say 'ordinary' hero) she makes them a cape. Caping people, catching them doing something... | Continue reading
"I'm not sure what it is, but I'm against it." It's a mistake to believe that people know all the facts before they decide. In fact, most of the time, we decide and then figure out if we need to... | Continue reading
All change involves an if/then promise. "If you want a delicious dinner, then try this new restaurant." "If you want to be seen as a hunk, drive this Ferrari." "If you want to avoid being dead, have this surgery." If... | Continue reading
...is that the system can't hear you. Only people can. And the problem is that people in the system are too often swayed to believe that they have no power over the system, that they are merely victims of it,... | Continue reading
Is there anything easier than listening to a lecture or reading a book and taking notes? And is there anything more difficult than setting aside our preconceptions and the resistance and acting 'as if', being open to belief, at least... | Continue reading
Is bigger better for the investor or is it better for the customer? At a huge hotel in Nashville (more than 1,000 rooms), there's always a long line at the check in desk, the gym is full at 5 in... | Continue reading
Your job is an historical artifact. It's a list of tasks, procedures, alliances, responsibilities, to-dos, meetings (mostly meetings) that were layered in, one at a time, day after day, for years. And your job is a great place to hide.... | Continue reading
... not if your goal is to find a breakthrough. Because your customers have trouble imagining a breakthrough. You ought to know what their problems are, what they believe, what stories they tell themselves. But it rarely pays to ask... | Continue reading
At first, it seems as though the things you declare, espouse and promise matter a lot. And they do. For a while. But in the end, we will judge you on what you do. When the gap between what you... | Continue reading
There are two pitfalls you can encounter in dealing with focus and process: In moments of weakness, you take on a project or client that's outside your focus zone. After all, you need the work. In moments of blindness, you... | Continue reading
One of the fundamental equations of our self-narrative is: If I only had more support, I could accomplish even more. Part of this is true. With more education, a stronger foundation, better cultural expectations, each of us is likely to... | Continue reading
Most of what we're chasing is that which we've had all along. In our culture, the getting is ever more important than the having. There's nothing wrong with getting, of course, as long as the process is in sync with... | Continue reading
Some things are races, but not many. A race is a competition in which the point is to win. You're not supposed to enjoy the ride, learn anything or make your community better. You're supposed to win. At the end... | Continue reading
In the old economy, social connection was done to us. "There's nothing to do around here." "I'm bored." "Nothing's happening in this place." You could whine about the fact that your college didn't have enough activities, or that the bar... | Continue reading
Great organizations are filled with people who are eagerly seeking to recruit people better than they are. Not just employees, but vendors, coaches and even competitors. Most organizations seek to hire, "people like us." The rationale is that someone too... | Continue reading
Do not tell your friends about your nascent idea, your notion, the area you hope to explore next. Do not seek reassurance from them. Do not become vulnerable about your tiny new sprout of an inkling. It will be extinguished... | Continue reading
A colleague was talking to the CEO of a fast-growing small business about a partnership opportunity. The CEO said, "well, this is something we believe in, something we want to have happen," and then he continued, "in fact, it's something... | Continue reading
We say we want sustainable packaging... but end up buying the one in fancy packaging instead. We say we want handmade, local goods... but end up buying the cheap one, because it's 'just as good.' We say we want the... | Continue reading
Jobs are finite, specified and something we 'get'. Doing a job makes us defensive, it limits our thinking. The goal is to do just enough, not get in trouble, meet spec. When in doubt, seek deniability. Projects are open-ended, chosen... | Continue reading
You can fix your "um" and you probably should. Each of us now owns a media channel and a brand, and sooner or later, as your work gains traction, we'll hear your voice. Either in a job interview or on... | Continue reading
Can you imagine how difficult the crossword puzzle would be if any given answer might be, "there is no such word"? The reason puzzles work at all is that we know we should keep working on them until we figure... | Continue reading
Impossible, not particularly worth wasting time on. On the other hand, a ten-year commitment is precisely what's required if you want to be sure to make an impact. | Continue reading
These are two sides of the same coin. Neophilia pushes us forward with wonder, eager for the next frontier. And ennui is the exhaustion we feel when we fall too in love with what might (should?) be next and ignore... | Continue reading
That's certainly one way to get through a thorny problem. The most direct way to get a jet to fly is to add bigger engines. And the easiest way to gain attention is to run more ads, or yell more... | Continue reading
It's impossible to see yourself as others do. Not merely because the medium is imperfect, but, when it comes to ourselves, we process what we see differently than everyone else in the world does. We make this mistake with physical... | Continue reading
Other than writing a daily blog (a practice that's free, and priceless), reading more blogs is one of the best ways to become smarter, more effective and more engaged in what's going on. The last great online bargain. Good blogs... | Continue reading