Elaborating what we hear is important to listening and the process of conversation. Bill Fox is the co-founder of Container13, a company that helps people and organizations thrive naturally in a world of constant whitewater. There are simple ways to draw insights from interviews, … | Continue reading
In addition to learning to make better decisions, we should appreciate the power of conversation as a discovery tool, when we use it smartly to suspend judgement and not try to fit data points into a neat narrative until we have enough information to make sense of things. This wi … | Continue reading
This is part III of a series on interviews. Part I revealed the secret to how great interviews are the stuff of legends. Part II with some examples of worst and best interviews centered on increasing value with networking and practice. Sometimes we arm wrestle a little in convers … | Continue reading
Ideas catch us in the most unlikely situations. In many cases, we're in a different place than we imagined to be ―the famous Archimedes eureka in the bath tub, which literally means “I have found” in ancient Greek― or in a predicament we did not anticipate ―our wish is granted. W … | Continue reading
Over the years, I've done a lot of interviews with business leaders and teams to help them build strong brands, connect with customers, create amazing experiences, and transform their company. When we make the time to do them well, interviews are a powerful learning tool. Here at … | Continue reading
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shares tips about his management style and philosophy with a crowd at the 2016 Pathfinder Awards at the Museum of Flight in Seattle#. The interview is by Steve Taylor, chief pilot for Boeing Flight Services. During the conversation, Bezos says that based on … | Continue reading
There's a good tool we can use when we want to connect—conversation. When we see it as dialogue, conversation is shared inquiry. But it's really hard to pull off this kind of back and forth dance between talking, suspending judgement, and listening online. More often than not, wh … | Continue reading
“Is this a test Pam? Are you requiring proof of how badly I wanna make you happy so that we can create this beautiful thing together?” The line comes after a challenge by Mary Poppins' P.L. Travers to Walt Disney in 1964. That was the time, Disney had invited Travers to engage wi … | Continue reading
In business we're always asking what solves the problem. It's much easier to dial into it when we make it personal. It helps us show up and create accountability for solving it. Say we go back to the start and ask—what’s the simplest way to tell someone what the problem is? That’ … | Continue reading
Here at Conversation Agent, we love books. And we believe that to learn the most when reading, we want to be in conversation with the author. We should subject what we read to inquiry. Not to agree or disagree, but to take control of what we think about the material based on wher … | Continue reading
In addition to being a digest of topics and themes ranging from business, to behavioral science, technology, and ways to practice learning Learning Habit includes some thoughts on what I'm reading along with a curated list of some of the best conversations from around the web. Th … | Continue reading
“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous... There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.” [Bl … | Continue reading
Trust is a fundamental building block in relationships—a discount or premium depending on the level of trust we have. The delta between the two could be significant. It could make or break a deal, an opportunity, or a relationship. What can we do about trust? We don't buy it, tho … | Continue reading
How many of us think of a letter as media? Do we consider writing a letter as part of a conversation? If we don't, we should. In 1960, pioneering American artist Sol LeWitt and sculptor Eva Hesse met for the first time and became close friends. In 1965, Eva found herself facing a … | Continue reading
“Virtue may be defined as a habit of mind (animi) in harmony with reason and the order of nature. It has four parts: wisdom (prudentiam), justice, courage, temperance.” [Cicero] Long before our time, Plato outlined a list of four qualities, which became known as Cardinal Virtues. … | Continue reading
Conversation is not just our ability to verbalize information, it’s also our ability to process information, of becoming aware of what we know, the internal dialogue we have with ourselves and our mind, the interaction between what we think and what we say, but also between what … | Continue reading
Management consulting hero Peter Drucker understood where he fit in the business ecosystem. He knew his job wasn't to provide answers, but to ask better questions. Because the answers have to come from the business itself and not by an outsider. An outsider can provide perspectiv … | Continue reading
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect.” [Bruce Lee] When we're honest with ourselves, we are free to pursue our fullest development. In The Warrior Within John Little says when asked about how he would raise his son Brandon in a world filled with prejudice, Bru … | Continue reading
We are most successful, we get the best results when we align our personal values with the value we provide. The more our behavior models what we believe in, the more we can close the gap on our promises, the better promises we can make because of trust and credibility. It sounds … | Continue reading
Every industry tends to be insular. Day to day operations dictate the kind of work we focus on, the divisional structure within the company drives the list of tasks per line of business or group. The focus can become very narrow. So much so that if we're not careful, we become un … | Continue reading
It's no secret than most our day to day interactions are based on some form of text—from sms to social media inside and outside organizations, and the elephant in the room, email—we get things done by writing. Which explains the popularity of products that help us write better an … | Continue reading
“In our global, networked economy, you can’t allow your social capital to lie dormant. Reinvest.” [Porter Gale] While there is a battle still being waged in social networks about defining and engaging influence online, in the executive suite, influence is often defined as informa … | Continue reading
“Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” [Albert Einstein] When we look at the genesis of a company and even an entire industry, we find an idea and someone who was willing to stick it out to make it happen. Starting something new is exciting. A ne … | Continue reading
We make decisions all day every day about so many different things. By the time we get to work, we've already decided when to get up from laying in bed, what to have for breakfast, if anything at all, what we wear, take with us and pack, the road we take to work, whether to stop … | Continue reading
Even the most career driven and ambitious among us eventually come to a decision point, do we follow the norm and risk living lives filled with decisions made by others, or do we take responsibility for ourselves, to become fully engaged with the process of defining what matters … | Continue reading
One of the cool things of getting to a certain point in our career is we get invited to contribute in bigger ways. The ability to contribute is not just a competence thing. Yes, we have more to offer when we build our skills and become very good at what we do, when we are insider … | Continue reading
We let all kinds of situations have free rein in our heads. Sometimes we spin cycles in our attempt to guess why something happened, or why someone said a certain thing. And the thing is our limiting beliefs can be willing accomplices. This is the personal equivalent of organizat … | Continue reading
Work is both an expression of our selves and where we negotiate our relationship with the world. It involves the practical, day-to-day activities and things we do to provide for our physical necessities that give us dignity in return, and also a desire to pursue mastery in a craf … | Continue reading
It was a story about how big data allows us to make decisions in real time that caught my eye a while ago that led me to say no, big data should not replace our thinking. The story contained another assumption about strategy, how it is fixed once and for all. And that is right be … | Continue reading
When I submitted the proposal for HubSpot's Inbound Bold Talk, a TED-like series, my vision was to share the journey that took me from teenager figuring out how to help her mother pass an exam for a highly technical certification in a complex subject matter to the opportunity tha … | Continue reading
“You can't organize truth. That's like trying to put a pound of water into wrapping paper and shaping it” [Bruce Lee] Most of us know Bruce Lee as a famous Chinese movie star in martial arts films. His family, friends, and those lucky enough to be his students knew him also as an … | Continue reading
It happens in every industry, business, and (if we're not careful) community—it becomes homogeneous over time. We gravitate toward people like us, and our conversations and worldviews start reflecting those of others. This reinforces a cultural phenomenon that goes by the name of … | Continue reading
“Those who depend on dreams, they live in a dream world,” says Coach John Wooden. He's making a point about putting in the work, what he calls industriousness. Wooden was a player, and then became a leader. One of the striking distinctions of his leadership style is that he embod … | Continue reading
We can learn much about the evolution of culture in business by looking at where they originated and how they evolved over time. A collection curated and edited by Nancy F. Koehn— The Story of American Business: From the Pages of the New York Times shines a light on three major t … | Continue reading
It's the place between words, a slight pause before listening and after talking: silence. It can also be the impossibility of separating the sound of words from their background. Body language can convey so much. When we can't hear the character, we can see them — talk, scream, w … | Continue reading
“The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.” [Mahatma Ghandi] It's the final months of World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur is fighting the Japanese for control of the Philippines. The general reveals his military genius and broken … | Continue reading
The hardest part of learning is our desire to be curious about something, our ability to think through what we find, and then engage with the data to make it ours. Even when we have access to the infinite repository of the Internet, the actual reading and processing takes time an … | Continue reading
Conversation is a tool we can use to make sense of the world, each other, expand our horizons, learn new things, discuss ideas, make decisions, or understand issues and reach agreement. There is an art to arguing well, as many a trial attorney knows. Politicians and parents alike … | Continue reading
Half of the battle in managing ourselves is about deciding how we place value on our activities. When it comes to quantifying one activity in comparison with another, knowledge work suffers from a metrics black hole. As Peter Drucker says in The Effective Executive: The Definitiv … | Continue reading
In a brief submitted to support Apple in its multi-million dollar Supreme Court patent battle against Samsung, 111 of the most renowned designers and theorists including industrial designer Dieter Rams, fashion designers Calvin Klein and Paul Smith, typography idol Paula Scher, a … | Continue reading
“Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem–in my opinion–to characterize our age. If we desire sincerely and passionately for the safety, the welfare, and the free development of the talents of all men, we shall not be in want of the means to approach such a state. Even if … | Continue reading
We don't get paid to have conversations. Conversations are throwaway time. There are plenty of tools and technologies for conversation. We can do away with face-to-face and phone conversations. In our haste to solve a problem — from collaborating and getting on the same page, to … | Continue reading
“Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise.” [The Lankavatara Sutra] Humor is a wonderful tonic for the spirit. Whenever we feel down and done for, a quip, as the British would say, pun, or well-timed joke does the job. Comedians, actors, and writers know the art of tur … | Continue reading
“Lovers of wisdom must open their minds to many things.” [Heraclitus, 25 centuries ago] Many things go out of fashion to be replaced by others. One day they are business imperatives, the next day they are gone and forgotten. Along with the buzzwords, awards, and puzzling fads we … | Continue reading
“We’ve got this profession wrong; a lot of professional economists think what they do is too difficult for ordinary people. You’d be surprised how often these people are stupid enough to say things, at least in private, like ‘you wouldn’t understand what I do even if I explained … | Continue reading
“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication ... Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our 'Age … | Continue reading
At five, she endured a two and half-day journey from Germany to England during WWII and had to fight to be admitted to a boys' school to learn mathematics. The words “research is the door to opportunity” etched above the entryway to the school made an impression on her. In the au … | Continue reading
“You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” [Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird] The term empathy refers to sensitivity and understanding of the mental states of others. W … | Continue reading