In 1948 David Ogilvy founded the agency that would later become Ogilvy & Mather. Ogilvy, who is often called the father of advertising, emphasized that the goal of advertising is to sell products and that successful advertising is based on information about the end consumer. Two of Ogilvy’s most famous campaigns are “The man in…
Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of Cult of Mac and author of the New York Times bestseller Inside Steve’s Brain, provides a fascinating interview about Steve Jobs from John Sculley, former CEO of Apple. It’s amazingly frank; among other things, Sculley suggests it was a “big mistake” to hire him to run the company when…
Once I thought I was wrong but I was mistaken. It’s a classic expression which is both a play on words and recognition that it’s very hard for us to admit we’ve made a mistake. Kathryn Schulz, author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error,” claims you can’t just admit your mistakes but…
In his 1963 Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman famously asked about a single statement that captures all knowledge: If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? Dr. Feynman…
Although I’m a native English speaker, I’m fascinated by other languages and how communication varies by culture. I’ve previously blogged that differences in languages seem to shape our thoughts without us realizing it and might be responsible for cultural differences. For example, directionally-challenged individuals might not do well in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in…
One of my most popular blogs is “The No Asshole Rule” which was inspired by a class I took from Professor Robert Sutton. Sutton encourages companies to get rid of workplace assholes who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who are openly aggressive to others with less power. While there’s a detailed on-line…
Stanford University management professor Bob Sutton has written extensively about the impact of bad bosses in the workplace. I blogged about his book “The No Asshole Rule” and have been using his litmus test ‘Do people feel more or less energized after they talk to you?’ as guidance since I first heard him describe it….
One of the tenets of my management guidelines is that I emphasize results over effort. With a focus on outcomes rather than activities, I recommend metrics that track impact (how much change occurred) rather than output (how much was produced). I don’t like to reward people for trying hard if they were working on the…
I recently had the chance to take an entertaining and enlightening class from Bob Sutton, professor of management at Stanford University and author of the book “The No Asshole Rule.” By Professor Sutton’s definition, workplace assholes are employees who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who are openly aggressive to others who have…
Years ago, I took a class called “Managing With Influence” from Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University and author of the book subtitled “Profiting from Evidence-Based Management.” During the class, Professor Pfeffer claimed layoffs do not improve financial performance – except in the very short term. He based this on a careful analysis of…