Loneliness and Aloneness are different. Loneliness is an emptiness and the desire to fill this space with another person in the hope that the emptiness will be filled and removed. Loneliness is to be unhappy alone; and leads to misery together. Loneliness leads to a possessive relationship that is not love. It may begin with … Read more
I’m guilty of sometimes waiting for that “perfect moment”. Its a great way to spoil this current moment. Last night, I was up in Johnnie Fox’s pub with my brother, sister and their loves in the mountains behind Dublin. We had spent most of a week together over the Christmas period. My sister said “I … Read more
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 … 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
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
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
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 … Read more
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 … Read more