Category: Self-Knowledge
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Manifesto: Keep Wonder Alive, Join me and make the #idontknow Commitment
In the spirit of changing myself for the better (and becoming a better father to my daughter), I wrote a short manifesto. http://cono.rs/idontknow In the next 10 years through to 2024, 1 Billion jobs will be taken over by machines. Google cars will replace taxis. IBM’s Watson will replace customer service staff. We cannot out-reason the machines. We must […]
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Become Indispensable: Solve Interesting Problems
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 […]
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Leading Teams: The 5 Styles of Managing People
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 […]
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Knowingly Bad
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 […]
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How to Choose in Life Decisions
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, […]
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Does success inevitably breed failure?
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 […]
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Accepting Feedback
At the end of every course I teach at IESE Business School, all participants give extensive feedback on their experience of the course, the facilities… and on my role as a teacher. When the summarized feedback reaches me a couple of weeks later, I open the pdf in a state of nervous tension. I am preparing […]
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How Ideas Die: The #1 Reason
A person can have the great idea, but if that person cannot convince a number of people: the idea dies. Good ideas do die. Good ideas must have good advocates. Good advocacy and good idea makes an idea live. Ideas need advocates like humans need oxygen. The Leader as Communicator The Leader’s #1 job as […]
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Deserving Money? 4 Millionaires Earn and Spend.
The 4 Millionaires Four millionaires are sitting on a park bench. Its a sunny Thursday morning. While many others are working the 9 to 5 routine, George, David, Jonathan and Paul are relaxing in the park. As you look at George, David, Jonathan and Paul nothing much stands out. 4 standard guys in a park. They […]
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Career Advice From LinkedIn’s Billionaire Founder Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman says it took him 15 years after graduating from Stanford to figure out what he wanted to do with his career. Hoffman eventually founded LinkedIn, a $19 billion public company. On graduation, he thought he would become an academic. Then he started some companies. Several failed… then he created LinkedIn. It didn’t fail […]