It’s a nice idea. Success is fleeting, significance is more… significant. All well and good, though frankly, we think perhaps better advice would | Continue reading
A Manual for the Mediocre - Paul Catmur Part Three Get a job. Any job. ‘I know of no one more qualified to write about mediocrity.’ Sir John | Continue reading
Memorial Day is an American holiday. It is a day when we pause from our busy lives – and those oh so important furniture and appliance sales – to | Continue reading
It’s interesting and useful to look at and learn about what history’s great minds have said and written. But ultimately, what matters is who you | Continue reading
In 1959, Miles Davis released what one could argue was the greatest album of the Twentieth Century- certainly the greatest jazz album- “Kind of Blue”, on | Continue reading
The Hour of Reckoning Is Upon Us We are in the grip of COVID-19 and the most significant social and political unrest in the U.S. since the mid-1960s—what | Continue reading
In 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote the famous book, “The Selfish Gene”. The big idea was, evolution is driven by genes trying to replicate themselves. Our | Continue reading
All my life, I had been a classic A-plus, gold-star, good girl who lived to exceed expectations. Diligent and disciplined, I worked hard to earn | Continue reading
“Relentless socialization”. No, that doesn’t mean you need to throw parties, it means you take your most important ideas and figure out ways to get people | Continue reading
Our friends over at Basecamp are having a bit of bother. The trouble started when the founders, Jason and David, tried to rein in the political | Continue reading
Remember what your granddad used to tell you? That famous piece of advice? You know, that “When the world zigs, zags” thing? i.e. Don’t be a sheep, | Continue reading
NASA’s wee helicopter drone became the first controlled flight on Mars. A definite first for the planet. What makes the story even more poignant is that | Continue reading
It’s considered one of the greatest ad campaigns of all time. The car rental company, Avis’ “We try harder” campaign. It first broke in 1962 and lasted | Continue reading
Anyone following the news these days will know, we’re living in some pretty crazy times, both home and abroad. Politics, the environment, the rise | Continue reading
Our favorite “intrapreneur” story? That would have to be our old friend, Steve Clayton. Steve is the “Chief Storyteller” at Microsoft, where he oversees | Continue reading
It’s a familiar story. Both the UK and the EU were trying to get a COVID vaccine program off the ground. The UK (who only just split with the EU last | Continue reading
Here’s the thing. Creative types are pretty useless at most things, like say, changing tires, skinning a deer, playing the stock market, or making | Continue reading
When we’re moving forward on a project but not as effectively or productively as we’d like, it’s worth reconsidering our environment. Years ago, | Continue reading
The Roman Emperor Diocletian (r. 284 to 305 AD) had a problem. The Empire had gotten too big for one Emperor to control. So he split the Empire | Continue reading
Why all the marketing speak? People often ask why we write so much about marketing, advertising, and branding. There are many adjacencies from designing | Continue reading
There’s probably a better word to describe these, but we call them “Wishful Thinks”. i.e. Things we think are true for no other reason than we wish them | Continue reading
It comes as a bit of a shock, at first. That it’s not that hard to make world-class stuff... Like, for example, beer. Not really. All you need to do is | Continue reading
Every time a guy with a dream decides to open a new big-city restaurant, the old joke goes, “Good thing nobody else has thought of that.” This problem is | Continue reading
Back in 1990s Austin, Texas, the musicians called it “The Velvet Rut”. Austin was still considered “The Live Music Capital Of the World”, the rent was | Continue reading
Have you noticed all the buff CEOs lately? So when did the C-Suite discover bodybuilding? The thing is, none of it is random. It is not a fad. In the old | Continue reading
There’s this recent New Yorker video about hardcore coffee nerds. A nerd, basically, is someone who is interested in things far more than the average | Continue reading
A few years after my mother died, I took my father to Las Vegas. I’d been booked for a keynote performance there and thought my father would get a | Continue reading
In the last year, there have been two books that have really excited us. Rory Sutherland’s “Alchemy” and Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works”. Both are | Continue reading
This Bloomberg article gave us pause: The USA has slipped out of the Top Ten Most Innovative Countries. That’s right. America's being surpassed by the | Continue reading
Another year, another massively expensive spectacle in which companies paid a reported $5.5 million for a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl -- on | Continue reading
Welsh denim entrepreneur David Hieatt recently tweeted this: “Being an entrepreneur is one of the most effective personal development programs you can | Continue reading
The great marketing blogger (and College Professor) Mark Ritson had a superb piece in Marketing Week about how, contrary to all the hotshots that give | Continue reading
Back in 1969, Kenneth Clarke presented the seminal BBC TV series. “Civilization”. It was a big deal at the time. It’s probably the most influential | Continue reading
The Roman Civil war came to a climax when Julius Caesar defeated Pompey The Great at The Battle of Pharsalus. On paper, Pompey should’ve won the battle. | Continue reading
Some people wake us up. They bring us a new idea or a new way to do things. They challenge us to think differently, they challenge the status quo. They | Continue reading
How many meetings have you walked out of and thought to yourself, that was a bunch of old white guys blowing smoke up each other's skirts? | Continue reading
Let’s reevaluate love today. Love is the thing that pushes us to succeed. Love is a thing that we have to feel for ourselves, for our family, for our | Continue reading
As the holidays swing round again, this year the idea of “Joy To The World” has never been more needed. And joy is a powerful idea. For it means much more | Continue reading
The great anti-establishment Australian publisher, Claire Lehmann was recently lambasting the big-city American intelligentsia for their lack of | Continue reading
Everybody loves Steely Dan. At least, every middle-aged, American white dude from the suburbs loves Steely Dan. For anyone who went to college in the | Continue reading
In pop music, there is a curve. “Easy-Listening” on one end of the curve (Barry Manilow, Kenny G, Billy Joel, etc) and on the other, we have “Challenging” | Continue reading
It’s a funny thing about leadership. By definition, it’s one of the most important roles on the planet. Your job is fundamentally about spreading | Continue reading
“I figured it out. You figure it out.” One of my favorite quotes was told to me by an old friend, Austin Kleon. He was talking about some famous writer, | Continue reading
One of the great things about our consulting engagements is that the effect of our work carries on long after we "leave the building". A few years ago, | Continue reading
The sad news was all over the media this weekend: Former Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh passed away under pretty awful circumstances. We are gutted. A big | Continue reading
“Culture” is having its moment, and it couldn’t come sooner. People are asking; “How do we maintain culture at distance?”, “What do we do about | Continue reading
There's an old saying: The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. No, the Stone Age was ended by the Bronze Age. And then the Iron Age, and | Continue reading
1. At the end of the day, we are a nation of creators. 2. We think of the creator class - the people who actually build stuff- as opposed to the | Continue reading