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Dying Before Going Into Battle
This is the title of the fourth chapter of the 1996 book ‘The Last Word on Power’ by Tracy Goss. In this chapter, Goss draws our attention to the Japanese Samurai warriors who, in reminding themselves of the inevitability of loss, used the phrase “Die before going into battle.” This practice allowed a warrior to […]
Music and Leadership
Here is a talk/performance by one of the living legends in the world of music. Ben Zander is a leading interpreter of Mahler and Beethoven and the co-author of the best selling book The Art of Possibility.
“Hell, I’m glad to be anywhere today”
Professor Randy Pausch made a surprise return to Carnegie Mellon University to deliver an inspirational speech to the Class of 2008 at the Commencement ceremony on May 18, 2008. In August 2006, Pausch was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. In case you would be having a bad day, check out this inspiring speech. As Pausch […]
Fine as North Dakota Wine
In his 2007 book Mindless Eating, Cornell Professor Brian Wansink reports that changing the label on a wine changes diners’ opinions of their wine, opinions of their meal, and their complete dining experience that night. Forty-one diners at the Spice Box restaurant in Urbana, Illinois were given a free glass of Cabernet Sauvignon to accompany […]
Dorothy
About 10 years ago I saw a movie about stormchasers called Twister. In order to create a better warning system, they hunted violent tornados in Oklahoma with a complex measuring instrument called Dorothy. Dorothy contained small balls that needed to get inside the tornado whilst sending back huge amounts of data. Of course, the biggest […]
My Inconvenient Truth (part 3)
A few weeks ago I blogged about the inconvenient truth (part 1) that "‘the ability to interact, the courage not to judge and the naivety to commit before knowing how" is a fundamental management skill in order to evolve and innovate. I did not really find a management guru to match that thought but luckily […]
Sometimes it’s Not Resistance
This is the title of a paragraph in Peter Block’s book ‘Flawless Consulting’. He warns against the paranoid habit of some consultants interpreting every line manager’s objections as resistance. Resistance is often a label used by consultants who want to be right – in spite of the customer relationship. Here’s a quote of that paragraph: […]
The Speed of Change
This is just a reminder of two things we all know but fail to understand when it matters most: simplicity and synchronization.
My Inconvenient Truth – part 2
Last week I explained how naivety and co-incidence have more to do with innovation than intelligence and analysis. That was my inconvenient truth number 1. The second one comes from the same session that I conducted with my co-speaker and this one was a bit tougher for me to take. But the feedback one resists […]
