“If you know the name of a bird in all of the human languages, you will still know absolutely nothing about the bird. My father taught me the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing about that something.” Richard Feynman Earlier this week, my father sent me 2 short video interviews of Nobel … Read more
A few weeks ago I was in the audience with my friend Manuel listening to Kilian Jornet share his life story. At the age of 26, Kilian projects the profound wisdom of a Zen sage. The mountains are a powerful teacher. Kilian will run up and down Everest in 2015. Yep, run up it. He … Read more
Global Entrepreneurship Week It is Global Entrepreneurship Week on 18 November through 23 November. There are events all over the world. The overall organisation website is: http://www.unleashingideas.org. You can find out more following twitter hashtags #GEW, #GEWSpain, #IESEGEW. There will be plenty of events in your city led by Entrepreneurs’ Organisation, The Kauffman Foundation and many more … Read more
Question for you: What do you have as your description line in your LinkedIn profile? Mine says “Moving People to Action” What does your LinkedIn Description say? I see several varieties of description. Some people just put their job title: “VP Marketing at Corporation Inc”. Some people an abstraction of their past experience “Experienced … Read more
I was teaching a seminar recently and a young film producer told me “I am not a good manager”. I asked him why he believed this. He described a recent series of disasters that he had overseen with his team. I asked him “who are the people on your team?”. He said his cousin helped … Read more
You can’t begin to improve at something until you are “knowingly bad”. If you are not aware of the lack of something, you haven’t got “taste” yet. If you think you are the best blogger in the world, two things could be true: You really are the best blogger in the world You are blind … Read more
Most people know what they would have to do if they really wanted to get where they want to go. But, they don’t get there. Most don’t even start. To Must or Not To Must If it is not a must for you, it is not going to happen. What is the holy grail between … Read more
Crossroads? A fork in the path of life… I was with a 65 year old successful entrepreneur at a direct marketing conference on Wednesday. I had given a speech and he came up and began to chat over coffee. He finished an MBA at Harvard 30 years ago. I asked him what was going on, … Read more
In 2001 I spent a weekend in Denmark with 3 friends. We spent Sunday morning in the sunshine visiting the Louisiana modern art museum 40 kms north of Copenhagen. The setting was beautiful, right on the coast with views over the water to Sweden. One of my friends said “this place is beautiful, its a … Read more
When does the switch from aiming to succeed to aiming not to fail occur? Has any company ever avoided it? NASA, Microsoft… and next up? Apple? Dan Ariely asks this question on his blog. Why did NASA go from the ambitious 1960’s to 1980’s era moon missions to the conservative, blame-finding, cover-your-arse culture of the … Read more