Photo by Phil Coffman on Unsplash I rarely venture out into politics with these newsletters, for obvious (and not-so-obvious) reasons. Obviously, this is not the proper platform for it. Not-So-Obviously, I just don’t believe that engaging in political discussion online does anything but cause people to simplify their opinion of you to a goofy bumper-sticker slogan. This idea […]
Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash We’ve all seen it happen. A trusted brand releases a bad product or changes their logo to something ridiculous, or gets sued. We all wonder what the hell happened when our favorite brand of automobile starts building garbage. I’ve written many, many words on this subject, but one or two bad decisions […]
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash Lately I’ve been seriously tempted to create an app that aggregates all the hilarious gibberish I see on LinkedIn. Here are some gems: “I believe in embracing innovation today to solve yesterday’s problems and to serve tomorrow’s community” “If a movement is to have an impact, it must belong to those who […]
“For Every Complex Problem, There Is an Answer That Is Clear, Simple, and Wrong.” – H.L. Mencken Hate to say it, as he’s a pretty controversial character in history, but he’s right about this one. Is there anything worse than someone who waltzes into a problem (typically a middle manager) and starts out by saying: “Why can’t […]
Photo by Bobby Johnson The Cargo Cult (for those who haven’t heard of it) is an incredibly fascinating phenomenon. Most widely known during and after World War II, Cargo Cults are the result of tribes on remote islands coming in contact with military occupation. Planes would come out of the sky and land nearby, containing […]
Had a great chat this weekend with one of my favorite human beings. It really gave me perspective after a rough month of April. I’ve been lucky enough to be around some incredibly talented people in my life. Some of them are talented to the point of “I didn’t even know that was possible”. Others […]
I promise not to go too far into the weeds with this one. It’s more of a bite-sized treatise, I promise. Capitalism can sometimes get a bad rap in American society (and the world, for that matter), but it’s easily the closest-to-perfect economic system ever devised. Let’s see if we can get through this without […]
When I hire a contractor to do work on my house or cars, I try to gain a working knowledge of what they are being tasked to do, and usually not much more. Granted, this is based on my understanding of the project or problem as I understand it. I’ve learned to let experts be […]
I’ve never been much of a self-promoter. That becomes a real problem when you play music for a living, like I used to do. Granted, I was playing in a thrash-metal band (and you were considered an obnoxious poser if you promoted yourself much), but it was the part of the music business that I […]
For those that haven’t heard the term “Tribal Knowledge“, it is usually associated with Six Sigma training (don’t get me started on why that has little value in the modern world). Basically, it means “knowledge ‘known’ yet undocumented”. The best companies in the history of the world have relied on these nuggets of differentiation […]