“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe] We know from experience that formal leaders influence the behavior of those in their chain of command. CEOs, lead scientists, general managers, and … | Continue reading
Most of us live lives constantly on the go, with little-to-no-time for formulating hypotheses to investigate further. Exploration becomes something that occurs by chance. Long on data, short on theory. Curiosity helps, but it needs acting on it to work. The relentless quest for p … | Continue reading
The the aphorism mens sana in corpore sano (Lat.from Greek philosopher Thales) has come to mean that physical exercise is an important or essential part of mental and psychological well-being. Another way of translating from its ancient Greek origins is a healthy mind in a health … | Continue reading
In 1946, British author George Orwell wrote an essay titles Why I Write, prefacing the four motives for writing he outlines with some background as to how we got started and the evolution of his writing. He says, “from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the f … | Continue reading
Our ancestors were tightly connected with each other, which is why they felt only the pain of their family and the people in their village. As we started to travel more and learn new things, we expanded the circle of sympathy to the clan, the tribe, the nation, the race, and mayb … | Continue reading
Things rarely turn out the way we imagined, but without imagination, we hardly ever dare to think we can gain admission to the adventure that is life. Joyce had her “star turn” as the off-stage lover in Il Tabarro with one single line. Despite her being the only young artist of h … | Continue reading
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” [Leonardo da Vinci] The ability to see things differently is a product of curiosity, thinking bigger, making connections, experimenting and testing ou … | Continue reading
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” [Plutarch] We don't have information overload, we just don't have a beginner's mind about what to do about all the stuff we think about. David Allen says our sole purpose on earth is to get things done, and for th … | Continue reading
“Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.” [Umberto Eco] The more we learn, the more we realize how much more we have not explored and understood. In the same way we have untapped … | Continue reading
An employee at Danny Meyer's Gramercy Tavern in New York City notices a woman entering the restaurant. She's in a panic for having inadvertently left her cell phone and purse in her cab. She doesn't know whom she's supposed to meet, how she's going to pay for her meal, or how to … | Continue reading
Chipmunk’s Plan For Future Better Crafted Than That Of 8 Out Of 10 Americans, said a headline in The Onion a couple of years ago: “Indeed, this chipmunk was able to accurately anticipate its wants and needs as far as weeks, months, or even a year ahead of time, whereas 80 percent … | Continue reading
History dating back to ancient times includes an interest in learning about and practicing virtues. American polymath Ben Franklin was a more modern example of a desire to be more virtuous. It seems we're living as the first generations who have zero public interest in the topic. … | Continue reading
“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” [Mark Twain] We all have powerful forces that influence what we believe. They're called family, personal experience, faith, and in some cases special mentors and friends. Anyone who tries to pers … | Continue reading
Socratic teaching is the oldest, and still the most powerful, teaching tactic for fostering critical thinking. Socrates is the most influential philosopher of ancient Greece and yet we have nothing left of his work. We know about him and his methods through the works of the works … | Continue reading
“The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” [Marcel Proust] There's distinction between solving a problem and finding or opening a new opportunity. In some cases we find an opportunity when we solve a problem, but in many more, we o … | Continue reading
Men and women are physically different, a statement that falls easily in the realm of observable knowledge. It takes 46 chromosomes to create a human being—23 from each parent. Two of them determine whether we become men or women—and at least one of them has to be an X (or we die … | Continue reading
Civilization used to value thought—it helped us build cities, created science and technology, and contributed greatly to medicine. Everything we see is the product of thought. But a certain way of thinking also produces destruction—when we break things into fragments and take eac … | Continue reading
There's only so much we can optimize existing structures and resources before we get to the end of our runway. In business as in nature growth comes from innovating. Because it moves us from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance, innovation leads to breakthroughs towards where w … | Continue reading
Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us had their perspectives shifted at the hand of Hans Rosling. He was a Swedish doctor and professor of global health who used his skills as statistician to dispel common myths about the so-called developing world. His quipped that “e … | Continue reading
The conventional wisdom of free market and free trade economics is often wrong and sometimes needs to be flipped on its head. Ha-Joon Chang is a reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge who takes the long view on his subject matter, grounding … | Continue reading
We negotiate to get to better results—it could mean a better deal for everyone involved, a win/win. Framing issues as a joint search for objective criteria opens the door for reason and standards to apply. This works well in situations where we're on equal footing, both parties h … | Continue reading
The inscription on Trajan's Column dates back to 113 A.D. The person who engraved these letters, the Senate and the People of Rome who dedicated them, and Trajan himself are long since dust. But the words remain. This particular set of characters happens to be the basis of modern … | Continue reading
“I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.” [Umberto Eco] As humans we have at least three stages of growth, with associated principles. Early development teaches us that the brain grows by use, our development follows a pattern that marries … | Continue reading
When we're faced with complex problems, in our solutions we often inadvertently add complexity of our own making. Instead, we should seek to sharpen the quality of our thinking and our decision-making ability and improve our process by using simple rules. The process to craft sim … | Continue reading
Listening is the most valuable skill nobody teaches. Since this is an activity that happens in the mind, we need to be involved actively in the process. Otherwise, we're just hearing. Contrary to common assumption, when we're listening we should not be passive, like receivers, ou … | Continue reading
“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” [Bruce Lee] It's easy to agree that the greater the number of goals we have, the less likely we'll be able to achieve them all. We may not realize how many goals make it onto our list, because we l … | Continue reading
We should practice visualizing failure rather that success. Marvin Minski, the pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (AI), also said there is tremendous value in negative knowledge. For example, looking to never make mistakes. In space, “there is no problem so bad that you can’t mak … | Continue reading
Acclaimed philosopher and historian Theodore Zeldin has engaged in a lifetime of philosophical study in search of what a full and flourishing life could be. He says that our relationships with others is both the greatest problem and the greatest opportunity of the twenty-first ce … | Continue reading
We underestimate the power feedback has on us. On one hand, it's useful to learn what others think and how they view our work, on the other, we should not become too attached to what other people say. One set of guideposts is to consider the character and care of the person provi … | Continue reading
“The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.” [David Hilbert] David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and de … | Continue reading
Eric was the CEO of a large international organization. He was hired private equity groups and hired by the board to help align the businesses internally and with market demand, and to grow with a potential divestiture of the business at some point in the not too distant future. … | Continue reading
For more than two decades, Ronald Heifetz has been teaching and writing about leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. In a series of books, he and his colleagues separated business challenges into technical or adaptive in nature. In a VUCA world, it's critical to understand the dif … | Continue reading
In March of 1933, a twenty-three-year-old Eudora Welty who was a couple of weeks out of college and six weeks in New York at the time wrote a charming letter to the offices of The New Yorker to apply for a job. She starts: March 15, 1933 Gentlemen, I suppose you'd be more interes … | Continue reading
“And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to the truth, that cl … | Continue reading
“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.” [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe] Dr. Paul D. MacLean was a physician and neuroscientist who made significant contributions in the fields of physiology, psychiatry, and brain research through his work … | Continue reading
“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” [Susan Sontag] The more attention we pay to something, the longer we retain that information in our brain. How much detail we are able to recall depends on the influence of a select few things. … | Continue reading
In the reader's guide section for Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking Susan Cain summarizes the thesis of the book. She says: At least one third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to part … | Continue reading
In 1985, advertising man David Ogilvy predicted 13 changes we will see in the ad business. A man who enjoyed his work, Ogilvy was fond of list making. Three years before making those predictions, he sent an internal memo to all employees titled How to Write. The memo is part of a … | Continue reading
“The real key is being able to imagine a new world. Once I imagine something new, then answering how to get from here to there involves steps of creativity. So I can be creative in solving today’s problems, but if I can’t imagine something new, than I’m stuck in the current situa … | Continue reading
“Underlying many of the problems of humanity is our inability to even talk about our problems.” [Paavo Pylkkänen] Physicist David Bohm had the capacity to abstract what he learned from his work into the larger arena of meaningful living. His way of being in the world doesn't allo … | Continue reading
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” [Aristotle] Reading on a variety … | Continue reading
Our ability to see into the future well enough to make good predictions is the product of diligent work and on the ground interaction and impact rather than tea-leaf reading (with all respect to useful ways of doing that.) According to Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, “it involves … | Continue reading
“as a staff, we joke that every single episode of our show has the same crypto-theme. And the crypto-theme is: 'I thought this one thing was going to happen and something else happened instead.' And the thing is, we need this. We need these moments of surprise and reversal and wr … | Continue reading
Our fascination with the stars began many centuries ago. Who doesn't remember the words made famous by Tom Hanks as James Lovell in Apollo 13? “Houston, we have a problem.” On April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert took off for a lunar mission on bo … | Continue reading
“Barriers are the universal of human experience.” [Bruce Lee] We all want success and money. Our time is limited —as in physical time, because there are only so many things we can do in a day, and we don't know when our number is up— we have a window of opportunity to make an imp … | Continue reading
People are networks of desires, needs, outlooks, and experience. We all have stories of where we came from, and ideas of where we're going. Sometimes we talk about our dreams, sometimes we make plans, and sometimes we just show up. Rob Lawless is interested in learning where peop … | Continue reading
In our haste to simplify our understanding of the world we tend to categorize things in binary fashion—right or wrong, talking or doing, yes or no, light and dark. When in reality the question is more about the degrees of change (for example, temperature), the delta of in progres … | Continue reading
Nearly three thousand people subscribe to Conversation Agent by daily email. If that's you, thank you for choosing that option. The current format was offered a while back by FeedBurner and is now unsupported by Google. So while it's not going away, the formatting is not ideal fo … | Continue reading