For your idea to spread, your app to go viral, your restaurant to be the place, it's likely you'll need to hit critical mass. This is a term from physics, describing the amount of plutonium you need in a certain... | Continue reading
There are more truck drivers in the US than just about any other occupation. For a long time, unionized truck drivers benefitted from work rules, healthcare, vacations, etc. It wasn't an easy job to get, but it was a career.... | Continue reading
Most organizations think nothing of having twenty valuable employees spend an hour in a meeting that's only tangentially related to their productive output. But if you're sitting at your desk reading a book that changes your perspective, your productivity or... | Continue reading
"Follow through." That's the advice you'll hear in golf, in tennis and in baseball. That your follow through changes everything. But how can it? After all, the ball is long gone by the time you're done with your swing. Here's... | Continue reading
The annual review is a waste. It's not particularly useful for employee or boss, it's stressful and it doesn't happen often enough to make much of an impact. If you choose to, though, you can do your own review. Weekly... | Continue reading
That's why we need to care enough to make assertions. We're taught to follow instructions, to avoid significant risk and to be good at compliance. The system prefers it that way, at least when things aren't in flux. But we... | Continue reading
It depends. Before we can even begin to discuss the price (how much to charge), it's important to understand what something costs to make. And the answer isn't always obvious. If you want to know how much it costs to... | Continue reading
The first is quite common. Learn to play the notes as written. Move asymptotically toward perfection. Practice your technique and your process to get yourself ever more skilled at doing it (whatever 'it' is) to spec. This is the practice... | Continue reading
Here's a sign I've never seen hanging in a corporate office, a mechanic's garage or a politician's headquarters: WE HAVE AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE: We care more. It's easy to promise and difficult to do. But if you did it, it... | Continue reading
The old-boy's network is powerful indeed, an unfair impediment to those that would seek to make a contribution, but it can be defeated with a combination of: Skill (the result of practice and effort) Technique (developing a point of view)... | Continue reading
A hundred years ago, "everyone" wore a hat. If everyone meant men of a certain social stratum in certain cities. And people wore the hat because everyone else did. And everyone is taking the day off and everyone is watching... | Continue reading
There are potential horrible things in the future, perhaps your future or mine. Unthinkable illnesses, weird accidents, lightning bolts of misfortune at random moments. If you decide to focus on them, you can fill your days with despair. On the... | Continue reading
Four years ago, I wrote about the media trap that retailers invented. With nothing much to write about the day after Thanksgiving, the media engage in a stampede to encourage everyone to go shopping on the busiest, least satisfying shopping... | Continue reading
There's the "thank you" that I say when you've been reading my mind, pushing the perfect buttons, saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. This is heartfelt, but it's also selfish, in that it's about my narrative... | Continue reading
If you need an appendectomy, it's unlikely you'll die during the operation. That's because the surgeon has been trained in hundreds of years of best practices. From Semmelweis to the latest in antibiotics, she knows what's come before. Not only... | Continue reading
When you're cooking breakfast and the school bus is coming in just a few minutes, it's tempting (and apparently efficient) to yell up the stairs. If a recalcitrant teenager is hesitating before heading off to school (I know, sometimes it... | Continue reading
Investment hates chaos. Before an organization invests in a new technology, a new machine or a new process, it needs to believe two things: That the problem being solved is going to be around for awhile if it's not addressed.... | Continue reading
If you want to build a vibrant organizational culture, or govern with authority, or create a social dynamic that's productive and fair, the simple rule is: the rules apply to people in power before they are applied to those without.... | Continue reading
When she wrote Frankenstein, it changed everything. A different style of writing. A different kind of writer. And the use of technology in ways that no one expected and that left a mark. Henry Ford did that. One car and... | Continue reading
It's not that complicated. It's based in history, it involves money and fairness and control. But it's not that complicated. If you care about the details, it's worth reading this classic from Tim Wu. There's no debate about how we... | Continue reading
Each one matters, each is intentional, each comes with effort, preparation and reward: Leader: The pathfinder, able to get from here to there, to connect in service of a goal. Setting an agenda, working in the dark, going new places... | Continue reading
A friend was describing a clerk he had recently dealt with. "She was competent, of course, but she couldn't engage very well with the customer who just came in." Then, of course, she wasn't competent, was she? It doesn't take... | Continue reading
You can't have insiders unless you have outsiders. And you can't have winners unless you have losers. That doesn't mean that you're required to create insiders and winners. All it means is that when people begin to measure themselves only... | Continue reading
Of course, it came with chocolate. There's no doubt that we're doing more running around than ever before. More cutting of corners, counting of pennies, reading of reviews. More focus on making a profit, less on making a difference. But... | Continue reading
One of the lessons of Thanksgiving is that we eat too much. We eat until we're full, experiencing the sensation of too much. It's easy to confuse our desire for that that feeling with the feeling of 'enough'. Enough doesn't... | Continue reading
What percentage of the work you do each day is work where the process (the 'right answer') is known? Jobs where you replicate a process instead of inventing one... The place where we can create the most value is when... | Continue reading
When the speakerphone is on in the conference room, do you talk differently? It's pretty common. We breathe from a different spot, hold our chest differently, constrict our throats and generally try to shout our words across the ocean. The... | Continue reading
Everyone else makes bad decisions, is shortsighted, prejudiced, subject to whims, temper tantrums, outbursts and short-term thinking. Once you see it that way, it's easier to remember... that we're everyone too. | Continue reading
All those meetings you have tomorrow--they were just cancelled. The boss wants you to do something productive instead. What would you do with the time? What would you initiate? If it's better than those meetings were going to be, why... | Continue reading
It makes no sense, of course. The question this prompts is: Are there places you feel like you're falling behind where there's actually no race? | Continue reading
Elections are the only place where marketers try to get fewer people to buy what's being sold. In many elections in the US, fewer than half the population votes. Which means, of course, that in most elections, not only doesn't... | Continue reading
[actually, it's more than that, but the previous incarnations of this blog are lost to the fogs of time] Delivered free, daily, for decades. You can subscribe at no cost by email, by following this blog on Twitter or Facebook,... | Continue reading
The engineering mindset tells us that all that matters is what's under the surface, the measurable performance. Designers know that perception is at least as valuable. Symbolic acts are rarely cheap or wasted if they work. Because we're story-telling creatures,... | Continue reading
Deadlines are vitamins for creativity. If you've got too much in progress, too much of a buffer, too many items ready to go, it's easy to slip back to complacency. Without the feeling of imminent, it's easier to hide. If... | Continue reading
If you want to raise the standards of any group, improving the top of the heap isn't nearly as effective as focusing your effort on the base instead. Simple example: Getting a Prius to go from 50 miles per gallon... | Continue reading
Under oppressive regimes, samizdat spreads. Forbidden dissident writing, informally published, hidden, spread from hand to hand. Reading it encourages and empowers other dissidents. But writing it--writing it is the true disruption. Because the act of saying it, saying it clearly … | Continue reading
Could be... That you don't know what needs to be done. That you don't know how to do what needs to be done. That you're afraid to do what needs to be done. It's frustrating. We want to move up,... | Continue reading
More and more, we create our work to be read by a machine. SEO specialists tell you how to write a blog post that Google will like. Your resumé needs to have the right keywords to get tagged. Everything has... | Continue reading
Sometimes, when we're lost, we refuse a map, even when offered. Because the map reminds us that we made a mistake. That we were wrong. But without a map, we're not just wrong, we're also still lost. A map doesn't... | Continue reading
It's rampant. The big reason is that we're all impostors. You're not imagining that you're an impostor, it's likely that you are one. Everyone who is doing important work is working on something that might not work. And it's extremely... | Continue reading
The best drivers are unremarkable. Their actions are predictable. The drive is unexciting. They get from here to there with a minimum amount of fuss. A good driver fits in, all the way. It's entirely possible to drive your career... | Continue reading
A friend asked me for some ways to make money. (All direct quotes). "Can I do okay taking those surveys where they pay me?" "What about buying or trading shirts from Supreme and then selling them?" "Do you think I... | Continue reading
Important work is easily dismissed by the audience. It involves change and risk and thought. Popular work resonates with the people who already like what you do. Viral work is what happens when the audience can't stop talking about what... | Continue reading
This is my favorite game. It doesn't involve a board, there are no cards and it's free to play. It works for two to six players. You can do it in a car or a plane, it works great for... | Continue reading
All you have to do is look around to realize just how many choices we still have. What to eat, who to speak to, what to do for a living, what to learn, what to say, who to contribute to,... | Continue reading
Some work is best shipped when it's done. Most of the time, though, we produce useful, important work on time. When it's due. If you're having trouble shipping, it might because you've hesitated to put a date on it. "Soon"... | Continue reading
The math has changed. It used to be, you paid money to run an ad. A little piece of media, bought and paid for. The audience came with the slot. Today, of course, the ad is free to run. Post... | Continue reading
Critics are eager to pick apart complex decisions made by others. Prime Ministers, CEOs, even football coaches are apparently serially incompetent. If they had only listened to folks who knew precisely what they should have done, they would have been... | Continue reading