Innovation
Keeping Score is a Losing Game
Maybe it’s a function of the age, of being 12 years old. I dunno. But a few years ago, our son would keep score of everything. If I asked him to empty the dishwasher, he would say it’s his sister’s turn. If we’re stacking wood in the shed, he lets me know how many more ...
The Astonishing Ignorance, and Brilliance, of Henry Ford
Henry Ford is heralded today as a technological genius, a brilliant capitalist, even a kind and generous moralist fighting for the rights and wages of commoners. He is often referred to as the inventor of the modern age. Quotes from Henry Ford are plastered on notecards and in boardrooms everywhere. “If you think you can ...
The Best Leaders Don’t Try to Control People. They Do Something Else.
This may surprise you, but prior to the early 1970s the word “parenting” didn’t exist. The word parent was a noun, not a verb. A parent was someone you are, not something you do. In the same way that we don’t child our parents, and we don’t husband our wives. According to Alison Gopnick, a ...
The High Cost of Conformity
Imagine you are in a room with seven other people, and the person running the meeting presents everyone with two cards. On the left-hand card is a line. On the right-hand card are three lines of differing lengths. You are asked to pick which line on the right card matches the length of the line ...
Don’t Let Your Current Project Define You. Move on. Stay Curious.
Our poor dog. Penny found a bone out on her morning walk. Perhaps it was in the neighbors yard, perhaps she unearthed it. But now the bone is hers – hers to carry, and own, and jealously protect. There she is. I can see her from the window, walking intently through the backyard with her ...
What’s Your Habit Trigger?
“In a nutshell, advice is overrated. I can tell you something, and it’s got a limited chance of making its way into your brain’s hippocampus, the region that encodes memory. If I can ask you a question and you generate the answer yourself, the odds increase substantially.” – Michael Bungay Stanier Recently, I had a ...
