On July 4 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. The declaration announced that the thirteen American colonies no longer considered themselves as part of the British Empire but rather a new nation of independent sovereign states — the United States of America. This in itself is well-known: however, here are some factoids…
More than six years ago, I created a wordle of my 10 most popular blog posts. Back then, word clouds were relatively new and I thought it was an interesting way to explore what I had been writing about. Some words were expected – performance, scorecard, objectives, strategy, metrics. Others were a bit more surprising –…
I always ask aspiring business people: How do you beat Bobby Fischer, the renowned chess champion of the 1970’s? The Answer: Play him at anything but chess. This excerpt is from the second chapter of Seymour Schulich’s book, Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons. Schulich is a self-made billionaire and one of Canada’s greatest philanthropists, having…
The Lucretius problem is exacerbated by the fact data captured in the past is not necessarily as reliable or as complete as data captured today. As a result, historical data includes bias or variability.
This year at the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee there were 285 entrants, including 139 boys and 146 girls. The kids ranged in ages from 9 to 15 years old. Forty-four spellers were only children; two were from families with 10 children. They came from all 50 U.S. states and 11 other counties. There was even…
It might have started with the Frappuccino, the line of frozen coffee beverages sold by Starbucks. The term was coined as a combination of the words frappé (in Boston: a thick milkshake with ice cream) and cappuccino (in Italian: espresso coffee with frothed milk). While the 500+ calorie beverage was only introduced in 1995, it…
A mentee of mine recently asked how she should confront a co-worker about a delicate situation. Her intentions were good but she was worried the conversation would quickly escalate – to the point the co-worker might lash out at her. What should she do? As the situation could have had legal ramifications, I encouraged her to…
A few weeks ago, I asked a co-worker to take the lead on a complex situation involving a partner. When I asked him whether he was comfortable being on point, my co-worker replied: This ain’t my first rodeo. If you’re not familiar with the expression, it’s a colorful way of telling someone you’re prepared for…
OK, an admission. I’ve been avoiding reading Antifragile, the latest but now three-year-old book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Nothing against Taleb; I follow him on twitter and really enjoyed his earlier books, The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. The buzz surrounding Antifragile was mixed. A friend of mine summed up his opinion in one word:…
On a recent transatlantic flight, I watched the movie Forever Strong which was “inspired by” incidents surrounding the Highland Rugby team in Salt Lake City, Utah. While the movie gets mixed reviews, I was intrigued enough by the story of Larry Gelwix, Highland’s head coach, that I decided to do a bit of research into…