For most of my career, I have favored candidates with high Emotional Quotient (EQ) over those with high Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Just like my mantra that culture eats strategy, I believe situational awareness often trumps pure smarts. Of course, I’ve never known any candidate’s IQ test score let alone their EQ score. (Yes, you can…
Thanks to Seinfeld, we know that double-dipping is bad for us. But what about the five-second rule? Conventional wisdom suggests it’s safe to eat food dropped on the floor – as long as you pick it up in less than five seconds. Presumably that’s not long enough for the food to get contaminated. In 2003,…
What’s the luckiest number? A variety of surveys have shown that most people choose 7. Lucky number seven. Why seven? A few years ago, I wrote an article which had a few theories on what makes seven special: There are seven openings in the head: the ears, eyes, nostrils and mouth Physiologically and biblically speaking,…
After writing about several examples of bias from insensitivity to sample size, a former colleague asked whether I thought performance in the workplace was subject to the same bias. She observed people were sometimes rewarded or even promoted for high performance, even if that performance was sporadic rather than sustained. She asked: Shouldn’t the promotion…
The law of small numbers (or hasty generalization) is the tendency to jump to a conclusion without enough evidence. In statistics, it’s called bias from insensitivity to sample size – generalizing from a limited number of events (a sample) selected from a much larger number of events (the population). For example, if a mutual fund…
For much of my career, I’ve argued that people design key performance indicators (KPIs) incorrectly. One of my own favorite blogs made the case that, unless you compare yourself against some external benchmark, you might be making progress towards achieving your KPIs but actually losing ground. Simplistically, if you’re growing by 20% and the market…
On Thursday June 1, while many Californians – including me – were watching the Golden State Warriors defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers in game one of the NBA Finals, Ananya Vinay, a 12-year old from Fresno California, correctly spelled ‘marocain’ to win the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee. I might have guessed the correct spelling for…
I travel often enough that when people ask me where I’m based, I sometimes joke “Seat 4F.” I’ve been able to observe a lot of passengers boarding planes. Based on what I’ve seen, how we board airplanes doesn’t work very well. And based on what I’ve read, it doesn’t make sense either. All U.S. airlines…
There’s no doubt the headline stories for the Golden State Warriors this season have been the all-time best 73 wins in a single season and the almost-unimaginable 402 3-pointers for Stephen Curry. Much of the press frenzy has focused on the pursuit of the Chicago Bulls’ 72-win record. The Warriors opened the season with a…
Longtime readers of my personal blog will know I believe storytelling is a fantastic way to introduce new ideas, make announcements more memorable, or to ensure you can break through the noise of traditional communication. As I wrote several years ago, We want consumers to view themselves as protagonists in a story with the brand…