(Or your logo, your house, your tie, your business card, your website…) Like a suit or a skirt, it needs to fit. You’re going to be looking at it for a long time. And you’re certainly going t… | Continue reading
Once you’re in a slot, it’s harder and harder to move out of it. The status quo is here because it’s good at persisting. One option, particularly if you’re on your own, is t… | Continue reading
If you’re at the station, sitting on a train about to leave, you might notice that the train next to you is moving. But, perhaps, that train is sitting still and you’re moving. It’… | Continue reading
Neil Postman pointed out that bureaucracies control the flow of information. A form, for example, has no room for all the information, just the stuff that’s requested. It’s impossible t… | Continue reading
That doesn’t happen very often. When someone combines generosity, insight and bravery to provide something before we know that’s what we need, we are particularly grateful. It’s a… | Continue reading
The office is a fairly modern phenomenon. We got by for millenia without them. For a century, the office was simply a small room next to the factory or the store. The office was upstairs from the b… | Continue reading
When a change arrives, some people embrace it. And because it’s new, they have to be specific about why. They can talk clearly about the benefits it offers and why they feel drawn to the chan… | Continue reading
Demetri Martin tells the story of seeing a necklace for sale. It says, “Diana” on it. “Wait,” he says to the owner of the jewelry store, “you’d probably sell mor… | Continue reading
Feet on the street. At the same time that air travel is becoming less favored by businesses, the world is more connected than ever before. There are lots of organizations that want to do business i… | Continue reading
Either you’re using time. Or it’s using you. You can watch the clock, but if you do, it’s watching you. Clocks have an agenda. They aren’t a part of the human condition̵… | Continue reading
How much should you spend? For just about everything, there’s level 1 (too cheap, total loss, all money and effort less than 1 is wasted) and there’s level 2 (spending ever more money t… | Continue reading
There are countless arguments about words that we often don’t understand the way someone else might. Words like education, learning, merit, talent, skill, privilege, smart and successful. The… | Continue reading
Chain restaurants rarely use fresh herbs. They’re uneven, unreliable and expensive, and most diners have been conditioned to want food that’s more processed and bland. The same is true … | Continue reading
Actually, the sign will never be big enough Make the announcement louder. Make the logo bigger. Yell. Call more people on the phone to sell them an extended warranty. Send more emails. Hustle harde… | Continue reading
It’s easy to imagine that over there, just a few steps ahead, our problems will disappear. Pessimists, of course, are sure that instead of disappearing, tomorrow will make things worse. The t… | Continue reading
Which comes first? The feelings, the facts, or the story we tell ourselves that leads to the feelings? It’s surprising that I ended up at the college I went to. Back in 1978, there were two w… | Continue reading
Arithmetic is a chore. It’s a ceaseless list of things to be memorized, with few understood. It is easily replaced by an app on a phone. Math is elegant, magical and breathtaking. Math involv… | Continue reading
After all, the marketplace is scalable, independent, self-funding, convenient and persistent. Except there are problems that the market hasn’t solved, and probably can’t. A century into… | Continue reading
After all, the marketplace is scalable, independent, self-funding, convenient and persistent. Except there are problems that the market hasn’t solved, and probably can’t. A century into… | Continue reading
It’s pretty straightforward to grease a squeaky wheel, or repair a broken window. Far more difficult is to realize that your room would would be a lot more pleasant if you added a window in t… | Continue reading
Tactical approaches can undermine useful strategies. And knowing your goals and the reason for the game are the best way to avoid the problem. Tactical thinking forces us to think in innings. It sa… | Continue reading
A simple but difficult fork in the road for the choices we make. I did the thing that was: expedient easy safe what my boss insisted on generous brave new effective done by everyone else deniable f… | Continue reading
If you are talking with someone about important things, from the heart, with honesty, it’s entirely possible that what you’re saying contradicts what they expect. It might because of th… | Continue reading
There are ten people. If those ten people were aware of what you do, trusted you and were enrolled in the journey of change you seek to make… They might each encourage ten people to join in. … | Continue reading
There’s a reason we hire a physical trainer, get a job and show up for work on time. We see the value in someone else directing our actions. On one hand, giving someone else authority over ou… | Continue reading
There’s a reason we hire a physical trainer, get a job and show up for work on time. We see the value in someone else directing our actions. On one hand, giving someone else authority over ou… | Continue reading
They say that seeing is believing. But it might be more true that believing leads to seeing. It’s often easier to discover the truth if we believe it’s there in the first place. | Continue reading
The emergency wins every time. The newspaper, social media, dinner time conversation, the principal’s office, sportscasters, the weather, the boardroom–the conversation is almost always… | Continue reading
Infallibility is a difficult model for forward motion. It’s likely that you’re going to make an error. That you will make choices based on things you don’t know, perhaps should ha… | Continue reading
At the top tier of just about any sort of endeavor, you’ll find that the performers have coaches. Pianists, orators and athletes all have coaches. In fact, it would be weird if we heard of so… | Continue reading
“Let’s make more!” 99.99% of what’s produced and sold is a copy or variation of something that was already made and sold. That’s the power of industry to shape our wor… | Continue reading
Businesses care about productivity. At the core of their ability to create a profit is the simple formula of work produced per dollar spent. Frederick Taylor used a stopwatch to revolutionize the p… | Continue reading
Businesses care about productivity. At the core of their ability to create a profit is the simple formula of work produced per dollar spent. Frederick Taylor used a stopwatch to revolutionize the p… | Continue reading
At the top tier of just about any sort of endeavor, you’ll find that the performers have coaches. Pianists, orators and athletes all have coaches. In fact, it would be weird if we heard of so… | Continue reading
The wind gets all the attention. The wind howls and the wind gusts… But the wind is light. The current, on the other hand is persistent and heavy. On a river, it’s the current that will… | Continue reading
Some projects and ideas are magnetic. They attract large numbers of people. And some are sticky. The folks who show up stick around and make the project part of their lives on an ongoing basis. Rar… | Continue reading
Some projects and ideas are magnetic. They attract large numbers of people. And some are sticky. The folks who show up stick around and make the project part of their lives on an ongoing basis. Rar… | Continue reading
In movies, that’s obvious. It costs far less to make The Big Lebowski than a Marvel movie. But the metaphor applies to just about any sort of creative project. We often err on the side of … | Continue reading
The wind gets all the attention. The wind howls and the wind gusts… But the wind is light. The current, on the other hand is persistent and heavy. On a river, it’s the current that will… | Continue reading
The word is thousands of years old, and it probably comes from the Aramaic: “I will create it as I speak.” We’re much more likely to believe what we say than the other way around.… | Continue reading
Two centuries ago, shoemakers in England were called snobs. (It sort of rhymes with cobbler). Good ones combined care with quality. They put in the effort to make a shoe that exceeded expectations,… | Continue reading
It always seemed like a silly question–school is for doing what you’re told, summer vacation was for discovering all the things that were worth caring about. As adults though, regardles… | Continue reading
The play before time ran out. The last speech of the campaign. The typo on your resume or the spot on your tie. The final decision before the company declared bankruptcy. We focus on the thing that… | Continue reading
Organizations grow when they develop a base of customers. Companies find profits, non-profits serve their cause, political ideas become movements for just one reason: they develop a group of people… | Continue reading
They sound the same but work in opposite directions. They both began as Latin terms for stiff and unyielding, but now, they’ve diverged. A rigid approach is easy to describe, but it’s b… | Continue reading
Freedom has a partner, and its name is responsibility. It’s easy to insist on all the things we should be free from. But then we realize that we also have the freedom to act, to lead and to c… | Continue reading
Working with a ruler is pretty straightforward. Just about anyone can extend a line, or fix something straight if it breaks. It’s on the line or it’s not. But curves? Curves are complex… | Continue reading
Why is type getting so bad? Well, actually, the people who are noticing it, the ones who care about kerning or keming or serifs or the rest… we’re not the reason that it’s getting… | Continue reading