Category: Critical Thinking

Reading Time: < 1 minute Those who are concerned that China’s economy will surpass ours should consider the following “required reading.” China just announced to great fanfare that after years of effort and millions in investment, it has managed to produce… a ballpoint pen! (This was accomplished in the US about 80 years ago).  Before

Reading Time: < 1 minute Michael Milken (of Wall Street Fame) holds the Milken Conference each year featuring dozens of the world’s best known entrepreneurs, scientists, financiers, researchers and other notables in hour long seminars on topics such as financial markets, the economy, medicine, Millennials, health care and much more.  Most of us can not

Reading Time: < 1 minute Jim Collins has become the pre-eminent management writer of our generation with such works as  Built to Last, Good to Great, How the Mighty Fall and Great by Choice.   In recent years,  has been increasingly queried by executives as to how they could efficiently use this impressive, but voluminous,  body

Reading Time: < 1 minute I was relaxing on my vacation last week and reading a book by Brene Brown – Daring Greatly.  It was a good read and I highly recommend it for those who want to grow their leadership skills. One of those ‘light goes off’ moments was when she discussed (as a leader), the

Reading Time: < 1 minute Ralph Waldo Emerson warned us that “Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of little minds.”  To which most  CEOs would say “But good processes create great results.”   But what happens when an unanticipated situation presents itself to an unprepared employee? .    You train employees in your processes…..do you train them to recognize when the

Reading Time: < 1 minute We’ve all been taught that “quitters never win and winners never quit.”    This time worn wisdom sounds great but may not be true according marketing guru Seth Godin who asserts that Winners do quit, and quitters do win. Life  is about making choices because you can’t try everything.  Godin advises that knowing

Reading Time: < 1 minute Anyone can learn from their own mistakes.  It takes a smart person to learn from someone else’s mistakes.  To that end , here are the “Ten Worst Business Decisions of All Time” according to two Australians who offer a collection of videos about 10 Best or 10 Worst lists on

Reading Time: < 1 minute Technology and demand for content are disrupting the entertainment business and making life tougher for other content creators and the middlemen.   Maybe you can learn how to change your own business model before time and circumstance make if a matter of life and death by absorbing the lessons of those who

Reading Time: < 1 minute The great innovations that have become part of the fabric of our lives were once extraordinarily disruptive.  Check out this short article that summarizes remarks made by Malcolm Gladwell this week at the World Business Forum on the “preconditions” for  effective disruption; the first consisting of being somewhat  “disagreeable.”

Reading Time: < 1 minute We’re almost to the last quarter of the year and many organizations will begin their annual strategic planning ritual.  Before you launch whatever strategy planning process you use, check out this short article in Forbes that offers some cautionary tales about the things that usually take the planning process off the