Even though my mantra is “Words Matter”, I’m constantly learning new things about language. Last week I received an email which contained the phrase “for all intensive purposes”. Of course, the correct phrase is the similar-sounding “for all intents and purposes.” The mistake struck me as both amusing and intriguing, so I tweeted that it…
All I really need to know I learned from Dr. Seuss. With apologies to Robert Fulghum, Dr. Seuss has more life-long lessons than kindergarten. Here are some of my favorites: The best way to learn and expand your horizons is to try new things. I do not like green eggs and ham! I do not…
Over the weekend, a senior manager at another company challenged me as to whether he really had to be digitally proficient. He went on to explain he had hired an intern for his social media presence and a personal online shopper for his clothes. He had an IT person to keep his smart phone up-to-date…
For reasons not worth getting into, this past week I was reminded of a decade-old HBS discussion entitled “How Much of Leadership Is About Control, Delegation, or Theater?” The original discussion was prompted by a claim from Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer that leaders only explain 10% of a company’s performance. Instead, a company’s current performance…
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. -George S. Patton Motivational quotes like that can be inspirational but not very practical. Intellectually we know bad times eventually come to an end. But why is it that some people seem to bounce back more quickly than others? The authors of Stronger: Develop the…
People tend to be precise with small numbers and imprecise with larger ones. Young kids love to explain that they are not 4 years old but rather 4 and a half – with an emphasis on the half. But hardly anyone says they are 54 and a half. They might not even admit they are…
Why are there seven days in the week? No, this isn’t a question that a curious 10-year old asked me. Instead it was the late-night group musing on a recent work trip. After an extended back and forth, we collectively chose the answer provided by an astrology fan among us: The days of the week…
Which matters more when making decisions: analysis or process? Given my analytics background, for most of my career I’ve tried to convince people they should make decisions based on data, rather than their gut. The more informed you are by data, the more confident you can be in your decision making. If the facts contradict…
You don’t win by predicting the future; you win by getting the odds right. I heard this provocative quote at a recent conference. As far as I could tell, the speaker was trying to make the point that you don’t need an accurate forecast of the future. Instead you understand the probability of different events…
Seventy years ago this week, Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra made his major league debut for the New York Yankees. Yogi Berra was a fantastic baseball player, arguably the greatest catcher of all time. To give you a sense of his baseball résumé, Yogi played in 15 All-Star Games, won 10 World Series championships, and earned…