Five little productive ideas to start the week from five interesting bloggers and authors. The end of busy at Zen Habits from Leo Babauta. “Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” Lao Tzu. Feeding the Idea Beast at the 168 hour blog by Laura Vanderkam. Where do breakthrough ideas really come from? PS Not checking … Read more
I have a page of notes in my notebook about asking questions. In the spirit of breaking the mold of my blogging, I will dump it here unedited… and a bit of commentary and James Joyce style flow of consciousness thinking to follow. The best answer is a question. Ask question = control power, help … Read more
I was in the coffee bar at IESE Business school some weeks ago. I overheard the conversation: “I’ll join the public speaking club in the 2nd year, it will be less crazy and I will have more time”. I was reminded yesterday by a great speech from Jaume about the overwhelming flows of data of the world in which I … Read more
Why do some employees earn massively more money than others? Does Leo Messi or Christiano Ronaldo work harder than Bob Smith or John Doe? More hours? Better formatted CV? The 5 Forces of More Money In this post I do a quick thought experiment – using a tool from MBA Business Strategy 101 to look … Read more
“Suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end.” The Four Noble Truths of the Buddhist philosophy Suffering is a human universal. M Scott Peck begins his book The Road Less Travelled with the words “Life is hard.” Victor Frankl wrote a powerful book … Read more
Ira Glass, presenter of This American Life, tells us that there are three basic building blocks of the story – the anecdote, “bait” and moments of reflection (video here). We improve a story by building up the central conflict, ensuring that the listeners can relate to one of the central characters and by adding surprise. … Read more
A friend of mine, Roger, asked me “Why do you call the blog The Rhetorical Journey?”. I am a fan of U2. I have been since I was 10 years old. On the album “Rattle and Hum” there is a recording of an interview between a journalist and Bono and The Edge of U2. The … Read more
A short note inspired by a post from Verne Harnish of Gazelles. He wrote about a keynote speech by Dr. William Horton, author of Mind Control. After showing various debate clips featuring Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, Horton outlined five techniques for winning over (manipulating) the masses: Encourage their dreams Justify their failures Allay … Read more
I just watched Michael Feiner, a professor at Columbia Business school, on Authors@Google. He talked about leadership. Jack Stack, author of the great game of business says that there are two disciplines needed in a company: optimization and innovation. I think that these overlap with the skills of management and leadership. Management is about predictability … Read more
Mr Matz. He taught biology. I was 14. I was living in Chicago having moved from Dublin and going to New Trier Township High school up in the northern suburbs. Mr Matz started the first class by holding up the biology textbook and asking how much it was worth? $30. He told us that if we learnt everything … Read more