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
There’s almost no sport or physical activity where that advice isn’t useful. Golf. Ping pong. Dancing. The more likely it is that people are tempted to focus on their hands or feet, the… | Continue reading
It’s the most resilient, most granular technique available for us to figure out what people want. When individuals have the freedom to choose, they often do. At the same time that markets ena… | Continue reading
Advice from people who have gotten lucky is a tricky thing. Perhaps they did x, y and z, and then got lucky. As story telling creatures, it’s natural to assume that x, y or z had something to… | Continue reading
That’s a fun question, but nearly as useful as, “what’s effective?” Pick up a fifteen-year-old copy of Wired, or a business book from 1969 and see what’s still around.… | Continue reading
Phrenology was discredited a long time ago. People who should have known better were sure that by studying the bumps on someone’s head, a trained expert could divine insights about their personalit… | Continue reading
They rhyme, but they have opposite meanings. It’s very difficult to feel both emotions at the same time, and one is far more productive than the other. | Continue reading
An objection is a useful way to understand what someone wants or needs. “I might buy that, but I need one that comes in red,” helps you learn that the color choice matters to this perso… | Continue reading
Errors are preventable. But preventing errors requires an investment. Before committing to an error-free production environment, it’s worth calculating the cost. A typo on this blog is relati… | Continue reading
The second time you rewire a system after finding a hum, it might take two minutes. The first time, the time you figured out what the problem was, it might have taken two hours. Typing a book takes… | Continue reading
The mirror might not lie, but no one looks at you in the mirror more than you do. Your business or project or life story is intimately known to you. You have lived it. But the outside world will ne… | Continue reading
People don’t say yes or change their minds because you persist. That’s because we don’t like to admit we were wrong. If we’re going to go forward, it’s because somethi… | Continue reading
The thing that made you busy might have been the reputation you earned for being reliable. Ironically, that very busy-ness might destroy your reputation. That’s one reason that so many servic… | Continue reading