The Low-Hanging Fruit Dilemma
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. -John F. Kennedy “Pick the low-hanging fruit.” It’s so common a phrase that very few of us ever interrogate it. The low-hanging fruit –the projects we can knock off our list fast. […]
War Games
Would you rather watch than read? Click here for the 8 minute video. The war in Ukraine has left us all feeling some combination of sadness, anger, and hopelessness. It also reminds us of just high the stakes can be when trying to anticipate the future. Apparently, the US government tried modeling the possibility of a potential […]
How Was Next Year?
Happy New Year! Watch the video here! Take a minute and imagine that you were an Olympic diver. As preparation for the world championships, part of your training includes regularly visualize that winning dive. In your mind’s eye, you see and feel yourself walking up the steps to the board, taking the steps to the […]
Less is More in Strategy
Prefer to watch rather than read? Here’s a short 6-minute video. Gardening Sometime early in the pandemic I decided I wanted to have a flower garden. I began planting things. Some of them grew well, some not. Eventually, it became a colorful garden. But soon, my pretty blooms got straggly, and stopped flowering. I was […]
Pandemic Lessons
We’re about a year out from the beginning of the pandemic. Moreover, we see the light at the end of the tunnel when everybody is vaccinated, and life can go back to the pre pandemic times. But now that we have a little bit of perspective, it’s a great time to start thinking about the […]
Pandemic Pivot
In the middle of an economic catastrophe, you and your business are facing challenges and obstacles you never expected. To be honest, while I am incredibly sad and pained by the suffering happening right now there is also a perpetual current of excitement pulsing through me. That excitement is for the unleashed innovation and creativity […]
Planning in a Pandemic
If you are a business leader, owner or founder, this pandemic has likely left you reeling. Prior to this change in the world, you likely had a plan. You were growing or pivoting, expanding or diversifying. That plan could feel irrelevant –and it may be. The world took a left turn. But life must go […]
Don’t Be Too Optimistic!
There is a very interesting innate human psychological tendency toward optimism. In fact, as humans, we tend not only to be optimistic, but overly optimistic, even in the face of countervailing evidence. That irrational optimism is called the “optimism bias” and it is extremely well-documented in experimental psychology. For example, although you may know that […]
Back from the Future
If you took the steps outlined over the last two entries you should have one or a couple of short, inspiring mission statements that vividly describe the universe, experientially, of life (or business) once you have fulfilled your New Year’s resolution. If it is done properly, it is not a correction of anything currently wrong or […]