You can use the power of callbacks to improve your marketing… and to be funnier. In case you’re not familiar with the term, in comedy callbacks describe a joke which refers back to one told earlier in the set. By reminding the audience of the previous reference, the comic gets more than one laugh from…
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but there has been an on-going debate on which is more important to an organization’s long term success: ideas or execution? Headquarter executives, strategy aficionados, and entrepreneurs often chime in on the side of creativity and ideas. Operational executives and line workers usually favor execution. Actually, debate might be too…
The parable of the Zen farmer reminds us to avoid hasty generalizations. In both life and in business, when an unexpected good or bad event happens, it’s common to quickly assess the situation and then jump to a conclusion. When things go well, we’re overjoyed. But when things don’t turn out as we’d hoped, we’re…
In the spirit of everything old is new again, I’m blogging the classic ‘give the frog a loan’ story since none of the 20-somethings I recently told it to had heard it before. Give the frog a loan is an example of a shaggy dog story; a longer joke full of seemingly irrelevant details with…
In the 50 years since 1970, the world’s population has doubled while the number of chickens we eat has increased nearly 7-fold, from 11 billion to 74 billion. So, why do we eat so much chicken? According to the National Chicken Council, it started with a mistake in 1923. Like many rural Americans, Cecile Steele…
The Find The Umbrella parable is likely apocryphal but it’s a useful way to explain why absolute rules in companies can backfire from their intentions. While there are many versions of the story, here’s the one I’ve told: A salesperson flies to meet a client only to find an unexpected severe thunderstorm is drenching the…
The Stonecutter’s Credo is both an allegory for persistence and a caution about false attribution: “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split…
After I watched Top Gun: Maverick, I called a Navy Pilot friend to ask what he thought about the movie. His response: “At the end of the film, there’s no way the F14 could have gotten airborne with such a short run. Without a catapult, it needs about half a mile (2500 feet) to take…
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” On a recent video conference call, a speaker used the gift horse idiom, much to the confusion of many of the attendees. For those who may not be familiar with the expression, it suggests people should not find fault with something that has been received as a…
Q: What do you call a group of sharks?A: A shiver of sharks. Of course, because seeing Sharks make you shiver. Shiver is an example of a collective noun; the name for a group of things. As I’ve often used animal stories to help illustrate specific points, reinforce behaviors, or to provide colorful rallying cries,…