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…
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…
“We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.” ― Tobias Wolff Earlier in my career, I preached the Silicon Valley mantra of “fail fast, fail often” as a way of encouraging incumbents to take more risk. I even catalogued motivational quotes about failure. Over time, I realized that failure was…
For many years, my routine was a Sunday hike followed by a Sunday blog. For a variety of reasons, both my hiking and blogging have become erratic. After skipping yet another Sunday hike, I was surprised to find that I still had exceeded 10,000 steps per day for the past week. 10,000 is the number…
If you’ve listened to a talk from a tech company over the last few years, you’ve almost certainly heard someone proclaim that data is the new oil. The phrase is widely attributed to British mathematician Clive Humby way back in 2006 who explained: Data is the new oil. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot…
It’s been a little more than a week since (mostly) everyone in Silicon Valley started sheltering in place and, surprisingly (to me, at least), I haven’t made a dent in my antilibrary. Truth be told, I’ve only read about 100 pages of a single book during that time. Part of the reason is that I’ve…
With more than 114M viewers, Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 was the most-watched broadcast in the U.S. according to Nielsen ratings. The next four Super Bowls had declining ratings, with 2019’s Super Bowl XLII yielding only 98M viewers – the lowest since 2009. The overnight ratings for this year’s Super Bowl suggest the trend was…
If you were to ask people in the technology industry to name the best commercial ever made, the majority would likely cite “1984” from Apple. That commercial, which aired during the 1984 Super Bowl, introduced the Macintosh personal computer. In fact, Advertising Age ranked “1984” as first on its list of the 50 greatest commercials….
Research shows that businesses with more diverse workforces perform better financially and are more innovative. Similarly, diversity and inclusion is good for the business of sports. The more that sports teams embrace the diversity of the community they are in, the more likely their fans will embrace them back. The National Hockey League (NHL) uses the international reach of the…
You likely know about reverse psychology, but have you ever heard of inversion thinking? Reverse psychology is when you get someone to do something you want them to do by suggesting they do the opposite of it. One form of reverse psychology is to forbid someone to do something that you actually want them to…