You are successful. You worked hard for years with laser focus developing unique and sought-after expertise that no one else could quite replicate at your company. It paid off. You are highly valued. People ask your opinion. They invite you to join projects. They buy you drinks. But lately you are distracted, almost bored. It’s not […]
You see, recent studies reflect that a little over half of us, at one time or another, experience periods of intense loneliness in our professional lives. But loneliness is not depression or shyness or poor social skills, and it certainly isn’t introversion. It’s more a feeling of estrangement, of alienation – a sense of not belonging to a place, or a culture.
“I can’t recall a period of time that was as volatile, complex, ambiguous and tumultuous. As one successful executive put it, ‘If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on’.” – Warren Bennis In 1961, Edward Lorenz was a junior professor at MIT working on meteorology. He used a rudimentary computer called the Royal […]
Recently I was asked to be a guest speaker at an event designed for executives of a big technology company. I wore a black suit. The very next day I spoke at a marketing group event of a Silicon Valley gaming company. Unsure of what to wear I asked, and they said, “jeans and chucks.” And […]
Andy Cohen was a marketing ad agency guy back in the day when Direct Response TV ads were considered tawdry, cheap ways of marketing. The kind of TV advertising that kept asking you to CALL NOW! It was the domain of late night used car and vacuum salesmen. Brand businesses wouldn’t touch it. Andy helped […]
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King Back in the early 90s we used to go to a club in Charlottesville VA to see Dave Matthews and his band play. It was free to get in. One time we drove there and […]
If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive. —Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Everyone is so busy these days, overwhelmed by complexity and uncertainty, that it’s hard to know what to do or who to talk to in order to accomplish daring, and unexpectedly awesome initiatives. And so we […]
In his wonderful book, Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard researcher Daniel Gilbert points out that often our best bet for making decisions we will both enjoy and benefit from, is to ask our peers who have made similar decisions. Gilbert’s advice before embarking on an important decision is to ask someone whom we trust, who has […]
It’s not a glorious job. And would likely be completely forgettable, if not for the frantic brushing down the ice. It’s distracting until you figure out that they are actually making the stone go faster by polishing the ice in front of the sliding stone. Sometimes I wonder if they accidentally bump into the other stones […]
From the kitchen window Christopher could see his wife was getting frustrated. Over and over again, Dana was running awkwardly, hunched over, down the driveway while holding on to the back to Will’s bicycle. At the time, six year old Will was still terrified of riding without his training wheels, or without his Mom holding […]