Picking the Best Team
“You wouldn’t believe it.” he says, although I’m sure I not only would believe it, but I can top it. “I was in first place in my league until Aaron Rodgers has a concussion and has to sit out. My back up was whoever the guy is from the Lions.” I pretended to listen, but [...]
Value Creator – CEOs
Chief Executive Magazine and chiefexecutive.net are running the third annual list of CEOs that are value creators and value destroyers . The standard measurement of a CEO doing well is the stock price, but there are influences on a stock price that may or may not happen. For instance Apple’s stock price barely budged when [...]
November 2010 Jobs Report and Wages
Here are the job market and compensation numbers for November 2010 (based on the job report): Net gain of 39,000 jobs in the month Private sector payrolls increased by 50,000 Down from 160,000 last month Worst performance in 10 months Analysts expected an overall gain of 150,000 September was revised to a loss of 24,000 [...]
Scared of Ideas or Open to Change?
He hears the alarm clock, hits snooze, and lays there for ten minutes somewhere between sleep and awake. “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg plays: He does what I think is one of the hardest things in the world to do, he puts the first foot on the floor in the [...]
My Experience, Our Story
Every Sunday millions of Americans sit in a hard wooden pew to attend church. Regardless of the denomination the session culminates in a pastor of some kind delivering his sermon. It’s a learning situation emphasizing morals and what is expected of someone within the church community. The message is delivered usually in one of two [...]
The Next 30 Years: Smaller
An election just passed and the results indicate a very unsatisfied voter. It makes perfect sense. Middle class jobs are scarce and wealth is gravitating only to the uber-rich. We’ve had a thirty year mirage in the standards of living. Thirty years is a time period I key in on. President Ronald Reagan made thirty [...]
Cartoons: A Subtle Story Telling Mechanism
One of my tenets is the idea of an ever growing amount of data. We have our five senses gathering data for your brain, but technology is acting as an extension almost like a seventh sense. But to understand what our senses are telling us, whether it’s visual, auditory, or touch for example, we use [...]
Right Place at the Right Time Happens, It Isn’t a Fluke.
There’s a movie out called The Social Network . The story shares a few perspectives on the founding of Facebook. But there are no shortage of opinions for this drama.
One common view is Mark Zuckerberg was in the right place at the right time. He was just lucky. It’s hard to argue he didn’t benefit from several favorable circumstances. Luck isn’t fated though. Good businessmen tend to be luckier than others because they play the favorable odds and work to improve their chances.
Many success stories start with a few individuals meeting at a coffee house and exchanging ideas. Connections are made and enterprises are launched. It isn’t luck these people were in the coffee house. They purposefully went there wanting to meet people who also wanted to people. A $4 coffee every other day results in a pretty wide network. So when right place at the right time happens, it isn’t a fluke.
Inspiration and Institutions
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of several best sellers including a favorite of mine The Tipping Point, wrote a New Yorker article last week about the bonds of Social Networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. To explain his point he describes the fears and risks of the “sit in” generation of the 1960s. Social change at [...]
How Pleasure Works – A Book Review
Quick Take: This book goes into the depths of the mind and looks for what feeds the source or core of happiness. There are stories of art theft, belching contests, bed pans, and cannibalism and I bet none of these you’d put on par with a birthday cake. And that is the point of the [...]