This is a point I've been confused about for a long time. For one thing, I fully buy into the idea that you want people to grow, as your organization grows, so they should have a level of incompetence for new and developing challenges which they will encounter. If they are fully competent at everything, ... Read more
There is an interesting news item on how a Stanford Statistics PhD may have beaten the odds through a systematic approach. Total winnings from four scratcher jackpots beginning in 1993 adds up to $21 million. The Clever Part The clever part was figuring out the seasonality and geographic locations of the winning scratcher cards. Not ... Read more
One annoying phrase which tends to be more useless than anything is: > We can agree to disagree Thanks to Wikipedia we know that this phrase may be close to 250 years old. We also know that it implies a kind of tolerance but lack of acceptance of another persons' position. However, there are several ... Read more
As has been said many times over the past 2,000 years or more, The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions. How do we deal with good intentions in the presence of bad outcomes? Specifically, if an employee, partner, customer, etc. is well-meaning but with poor results, how do we respond? As we get ... Read more
Much of academia and academic research in America is epiphenomenal. This is best illustrated by the common comparison of college with the real world. That is, college, the ivory tower, etc., is its' own world that has different rules, and whose learning doesn't always or even usually apply to the other world, outside of academia. ... Read more
The Solo Entrepreneur is considered to be an inferior species, generally shunned by investors, and for whom traction comes many years later, when compared with two or more founding partners. However, there are many advantages to solo entrepreneurship, and while the odds of success are likely less, the odds of success of any entrepreneurial activity ... Read more
As an expat from the USA living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, foreigners are immediately noticeable (unless of asian descent), and stand out. Clearly I am not originally from here, and so this lends itself to the entrepreneurial question: Why would entrepreneurs relocate from one country to another? * Less risk * More opportunity Opportunity and ... Read more
Peter Drucker - The Man who Invented Management Peter Drucker died in 2005, eight days shy of his 96th birthday. The man literally invented the discipline of management and the management consultant. His 39 books have been translated into over 30 languages. The book of Drucker's I have read the most is The Effective Executive. ... Read more
Don Dodge wrote a great blog post titled Is your product a vitamin or a painkiller? This is actually quite an old post, but old as in golden. When a Vitamin becomes a Painkiller What catalyst or event causes your prospects to actively seek your product or solution? When you look at all the sales ... Read more
The inane, though of course superficially appealing, desire to change the world. The question in response is to what? After all, some changes are either inconsequential, or worse, complete disasters, through unintended consequences. It is no comfort that the particular change might be unavoidable or done by someone else in any case. For the one ... Read more