Category: Blog

  • Change Management is the tactical implementation of strategy

    Change Management is the tactical implementation of strategy

    Change Management is a vague concept. It has been around for about fifty years, but there it lacks an 100 percent agreed upon definition. A cynic would say it’s almost like people built an entire industry without fully understanding what it is they were claiming to do.  John Kotter, who popularized the term, originally considered it an 8-step linear process. PROSCI, the largest […]

  • The Dangers of Data Journalism

    The Dangers of Data Journalism

    I like Catherine Rampell. I can’t say that I am a regular reader, but every time I am forwarded something she wrote I normally read it. That being said, this week wasn’t a good week to be Catherine Rampell. She inadvertently made a case study in the dangers of data journalism.

  • To Hate or to Adhere

    To Hate or to Adhere

    Why does language evolve the way that it does? I stumbled upon a passage written about John Adams by Thomas Jefferson. Adams was a notoriously jealous and petty. He earned the nickname “His Rotundity” for being obese and arguing that everyone should refer to George Washington as “His Majesty the President.” Jefferson was a cool […]

  • Book Review: Peter Thiel’s Zero to One

    Book Review: Peter Thiel’s Zero to One

    Each year hundreds of thousands of business books are published. Peter Thiel’s Zero to One is arguably the best business book of the decade.

  • Book Review: Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control

    Book Review: Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control

    I can say this with certainty: Command and Control is without a doubt the most comprehensive book on the systemic risk of any nuclear weapons system.

  • The Revolutionary Logic Behind Chip Kelly’s Madness

    The Revolutionary Logic Behind Chip Kelly’s Madness

    [drop_caps]C[/drop_caps]hip Kelly is an interesting man. He was an unassuming former D-1AA defensive back who became a successful offensive coordinator and found himself the most wanted college football coach in America. In his first game as the head coach of the Oregon Ducks, his team managed just 153 yards and scored only 8 points. A […]

  • The Most Devastating Insult

    The Most Devastating Insult

    Sinclair Lewis was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. He has been mostly forgotten, but he once wrote best selling novels, short-stories and plays. He had his own stamp. He was evidentially the inspiration for Howdy Doody. He also wrote one of the greatest insult passages of all time: She was […]

  • And We Wonder Why the GM Recall is a Diaster

    And We Wonder Why the GM Recall is a Diaster

    On July 22, 2014 General Motors announced they would recall an additional 800,000 cars, bringing their annual total to 29,000,000. According to The New York Times the cars have been called back for a number of problems including: “seats, air bags and turn signals, parts that may not have been welded together properly, and a […]

  • Why Outsource?

    Why Outsource?

    When you throw away the books and the theory and look behind the curtain to see public and business strategy being implemented something becomes clear: most people have no idea what they are doing.  They may speak the language and look the part, but deep down most decision makers do what they think a person in […]

  • The Six Innovations of CrossFit

    The Six Innovations of CrossFit

    [drop_caps]Y[/drop_caps]ou know you are on to something when people simultaneously hate and adore what you are doing. A prominent Boston Globe columnist once wrote about a band, “[They] are not merely awful; I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are god awful.”[1. Coincidentally the critic was none other than William […]