Herb Caen would have been 100 years old today. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize the name. ”Mr. San Francisco,” as he was sometimes called, wrote a Pulitzer-winning newspaper column for 60 years dedicated to his adopted hometown. Herb Caen was beloved locally but was largely unknown outside San Francisco. Caen’s influence was so great…
Matthew Frederick has a series of seven books titled 101 Things I Learned in (Architecture | Business | Culinary | Engineering | Fashion | Film | Law) School. They are self-described as “lessons and insights to orient the newcomer and inspire the experienced practitioner.” In each book, Frederick teams up with an expert practitioner to…
The odds are you’ve never heard of William L. McKnight. William McKnight joined Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) in 1907 as an assistant bookkeeper. At the time, the company was only five years old but had already pivoted from mining corundum to making sandpaper. Persistence and innovation was in the company DNA from the…
So, for the 41st year in a row, Lake Superior State University (LSSU) issued a presser with a list of problematic words that should banned by every stakeholder. Their secret sauce in generating the list? The price point is good, everyone can join the conversation, and they never walk it back if someone complains about…
If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don’t particularly like.Soichiro Honda Over the last few months, I spent a fair amount of time looking for people to add to my team. Actually, that’s…
As you probably guessed from my previous post, I have a lot of books in my office I’ve never read. I do plan on reading them – eventually – but new books often arrive faster than I can read my existing ones. Occasionally, I give books away; but only those I have read and that…
You’re gonna need a bigger boat. — Roy Scheider as Martin Brody in Jaws For nearly 30 years, a good friend and I have had an on-going debate on the greatest movie line of all time. Actually, for the first few years, it wasn’t much of a debate. We both agreed “Luke, I am your…
The local dump was so overflowing that it had to refuse refuse. If you’re like most people, that sentence looks wrong. After all, it has the same word repeated twice in a row. Most of us assume it can’t be proper grammar. While it’s true that repeated words usually are bad grammar, in this case…
Over the years, I’ve compiled multiple lists of quotes about performance management, technology, and failure. Lately I’ve been thinking about prioritization and how to deal with the unending requests for my time. As I blogged about last year, I’ve had some luck using Tim Ferriss’ advice on 9 habits we all should stop — although I admit…
The pessimist believes the glass is half empty and the optimist sees it as half full but the insomniac stays up all night trying to decide the answer. This is an amusing twist on the classic expression normally used to show that any given situation can be looked at optimistically (half full) or pessimistically (half…