Maslow’s Hammer, Digitized
Abraham Maslow is attributed with saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Most of us are guilty of falling prey to such thinking in our personal and professional lives at some points in time. However, I think this mode of thinking also affects organizations. Individuals and organizations attempting to remain relevant and thrive in the digital age should resist the temptation to focus too much effort on transforming their existing skills, products and...
Read MoreWhat’s In Your Attic?
One of my favourite books is Steinbeck’s “The Winter of our Discontent”. In it, he writes “So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.” I love this sentiment. It can be applied at a personal level, organizational level, institutional / societal level or at almost any abstraction one cares to apply it to. These lovelies in the attic could be ways of doing...
Read MoreThe Goodness of Blisters
Being someone who works in an office environment, I have office-worker hands. It doesn’t take much in the way of manual labour to lead to the inevitable and annoying blister. I’m not a big gardener, but fall leaf raking thing sometimes produces them. I also love splitting wood for our fireplace and that activity always leads to blisters when I have any kind of splitting volume to get through. A couple of weeks back, as I was happily hacking my way through some maple from a neighbour’s...
Read MoreTelevision is the New Television
Author Michael Wolff’s book, of which I only read the abstract via getabstract, reinforces a simple truth that exists in my universe – namely, a good story makes for good entertainment. He argues that new digital media companies are following the same model as the old line media companies they are seeking to replace (newspapers, for example) by providing disposable content to large viewerships. Ad rates (and thus their business model), are tied to the viewership metrics. TV on...
Read MorePain vs. Harm
I only listened to a portion of the audio book Necessary Endings as I found the content quite repetitive. However, one of my key take-away’s was the distinction the author makes between pain and harm. Pain isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In an anatomical sense, it is the body’s warning system to alert us to problems needing attention. In a business sense, the author suggests that while there are lots of scenarios where people and teams undergo pain, these are sometimes...
Read MoreSharpening the Saw
One of the benefits of being a free agent / contractor is that between contracts, you get to wipe the slate clean and start over. Downtime between gigs provides the opportunity to evaluate what worked and what didn’t in your last engagement and in general, assess and document what you learned. It also affords you the opportunity to overlay your last engagement with all your prior experiences. It’s quite interesting to see what similarities you find (in people, company cultures,...
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