After writing about stories, and seeing a description of Seth Godin’s “tiny white board seminar”, I had an idea: Could a professional conference be more effective if it were constructed as a series of stories created by small groups? Imagine this. Instead of sitting in a room with someone behind a podium referring to… Read More
Here’s what Adam had to say about working with me today (HE wrote this!): Hi, I am Adam. I am in 6th grade, and go to Springfield Middle School. Today was take your child to work day, so I stayed home with my mom since she works at home. I had a fun experience at… Read More
My son came up to me last night and said “Mom, tomorrow is take your child to work day”. Before he could finish I started laughing “so you want to stay home. Nice try!” Then I thought about it. Why was my first assumption that he wanted to watch TV and play video games all… Read More
I’ve been struck recently by how easily you can join just about any conversation. In the last several months I’ve been connecting with people I barely know, commenting on blogs, and writing this one. I am interacting with people all over the country and I’m more in tune with colleagues now than when I went… Read More
Purple Cow has really gotten me thinking about compromise in product development. As Seth Godin writes, “Compromise is about sanding down the rough edges to gain buy-in from other constituencies. Vanilla is a compromise ice cream flavor…But vanilla is boring. You can’t build a fast-growing company around vanilla.” Well, the problem is that you can’t… Read More
In my last post I advocated forgetting irrelevant rules and making your own decisions. That might sound a little ridiculous to some, but consider this: Only you are responsible for your actions. Sure, doing what you’re told might give you a great excuse, but does it absolve you from your responsibility to use your brain? … Read More
Rules replace thought. If you know the rules, you always know what to do. Rules are comfortable. If you know the rules, you never have to stretch too far. Rules are safe. You probably won’t get fired for following the rules. Unfortunately, you probably won’t make much progress either. Rules work when the rate of… Read More
A couple of weeks ago in a posting on Tom Peters’ blog (look in March archives for the entry “Refine to Simplicity”, March 10th), Steve Yastrow proposed that customers are: Anyone whose actions affect your results In an information creation and management organization, how differently would you treat content providers (authors) if you considered them… Read More