People often hold on to their beliefs, despite evidence to the contrary. Someone once even said to me ‘don’t confuse me with facts.’ Beliefs trump facts. The Javna Brothers’ Life Is A Joke book has an entertaining story which describes the phenomena. Here’s my summary of the full version: A man is convinced he’s dead….
The commonly-accepted practice of employee ranking can be dangerous to company culture. Ranking employees, also known as stacked or forced ranking, is a process which compares individual employees to each other, typically associated with annual performance reviews. Employees are usually forced into one of three buckets: A (top 20%), B (the middle 70%), and C…
What are your top 5 cult classics? For nearly 30 years, a good friend and I have had an on-going debate on the greatest movie line of all time. Spoiler alert: not surprisingly, mine is Sharks related. This year, we decided to start a new tradition and began debating the best cult classics of all…
Compulsively worrying about sleeping is one of the primary causes of insomnia. People with sleep problems tend to worry about being able to go to sleep which in turn makes it harder for them to go to sleep. Harvard professor Daniel Wegner calls this “the ironic process of mental control.” People become increasingly anxious as…
In the book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there’s a vignette called ‘Beware of the Leopard’ which explains why it’s critical to provide convenient access to important information. The vignette is a useful way to explain information asymmetry, in which one person has relevant information not known by or available to the other person. Here’s…
There’s a classic story called ‘prepare three envelopes’ which provides advice on leadership transitions. There are versions which apply to business, government, and sports teams but they essentially all have the same advice. Here’s a version: A new executive is hired to take over a struggling business unit. During the handover meeting, the previous executive…
The phrase ‘it is what it is’ has exploded in popularity. I might not have noticed except it’s a phrase my Mom has been using my whole life; I may be overly-sensitized to it. I first noticed a surge in popularity towards the beginning of the US pandemic-related shutdown when it became a popular meme….
Sometimes I’m directionally accurate but not precise. My lack of precision isn’t an attempt to mislead or misinform. After all, my motto is words matter so I usually choose my words carefully. Instead, this imprecision stems from the desire to tell a compelling story or when my memory is cloudy. Here’s a recent real-life example:…
Early in my career, I was subjected to the so-called “bring me a rock” phenomenon and the experience left me with a sense of frustration which has stuck with me ever since. This phenomenon happens when a manager cannot or will not communicate their goals clearly and succinctly. Subordinates repeatedly try to fulfill their manager’s…
Have you ever had a co-worker or a teacher try to explain something to you and use words that you didn’t really understand? If so, the confusion might be theirs, not yours. The Feynman Learning Technique suggests that, if you can’t adequately explain something to a twelve-year old, you probably don’t really understand it that…