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
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
John Paul DeJoria gave a Keynote at Stanford Entreprenuership recently. He has many skills and strong instincts. Now he is a multi-billionaire, but he slept in his car the first few weeks of founding John Paul Mitchell Systems. People Person Skills His people-person skills are phenomenal. In the Q&A he was asked how to size ... Read more
2000 will soon be ten years old. Welcome to the new decade! (Yes folks, there is no year zero, therefore the calendar decade of the Gregorian calendar begins at year 1 and ends at year 10.) Ok, where have we been and where are what's next? Retrospective and Foresight Looking back cannot really show the ... Read more
Sakichi Toyoda and the Five Whys Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Company, is considered one of the greatest if not the greatest inventor of Japan and the father of Japanese Industrialization. His impact on the world should not be underestimated. As with most historical figures, our tasks are different because we live in ... Read more
This is the sort of post that generally makes me laugh out loud. No one can predict anything like 40 years out. I myself routinely mock anyone who tries to do such a thing. However... However, it is possible to draw out trend lines, even though we can be certain they will shift. And in ... Read more
The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying. ... Read more
Simplicity and Complexity Habits are simple, nature complex. This formulation is meant to help understand how to talk about and act regarding the future. Change is necessary, and it is even possible. How do we conceive of this possibility? How do we talk about it? The real question regarding talk, is to what degree is ... Read more
Talkin' 'bout the future Talking about the future has two senses, the first is along the lines of "just talk" as opposed to action. The second sense has talking as a part of bringing the future into being. The best way to predict the future is to create it. --Peter Drucker The Monk There is ... Read more
Any future must and will actually come from places like Manila and Bangkok. At the very least it will find a home there. The present discourse around futurology is predominantly driven and reflected of the developed world. The future is a developed future along the trajectory of current developed nations. And thereby leaves the most ... Read more
Habit changes nature Habit and Nature Some might suggest we are human doing, rather than human being. I believe it was Aristotle who suggested it is what we do that makes us what we are. There is no essential being underneath our actions, per se, but the actions and the beings are concomitant. If so, ... Read more