Blog
Learning to reduce our dependence on foreign oil
In the modern workplace, there is nothing wrong with wanting to receive validation in exchange for talent. What team member doesn’t want to be told that they’re doing a great job? But there’s a balance. If we show up at the office each day with the expectation that our bosses will endow us with boundless reassurance and infinite hope, then a tsunami of disappointment is on the horizon. Ellis…
Steal Scott’s Ideas: The Card Game
Steal Scott’s Ideas, is my new product development and innovation card game. First it was a spreadsheet. Then some blog posts. Soon a series of corporate workshops. Later came the podcast. And now there is a home edition. This box was designed with a few questions in mind. First, how can we create shelf value? Let’s design this small box in a way that creates joy and intrigue for…
Tell that feeling to piss off, it’s not who you are
Cynics and skeptics have an insidious way of crippling the noblest intentions in even the strongest of minds. It’s this toxic thing that negative people do. Out of fear, they start scrambling. Infecting everyone around them with their soul stank. And if you’re not fully equipped with air tight boundaries, they can suck you down into their vortex of despair where you will be slowly digested over a thousand…
Rally the winded animal and squeeze the speed out of weary legs
Creative people choose projects with the potential to galvanize them, but true innovators choose projects with the potential to galvanize others around them. That’s the kind of person every organization wants to hire. Someone they can build something around. Someone who can be a rallying point for others. Someone who can cast a compelling vision that the rest of the team eagerly runs towards. My experience working at a…
The openness has been conditioned out of us
Have you ever worked with someone who always seemed to have do not a disturb sign hanging on their brains? You know the type. These are people who deeply resent anything even resembling a new idea. People who are allergic to taking risks and running experiments. People who pay lip service to the concept of innovation because their main goal is to not get fired. It’s like the openness…
Grasping onto his ankles as he headed toward heaven
Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavior theory, reminds us that the assumed catastrophic quality of most potentially unpleasant events is almost invariably highly exaggerated. And that the worst thing about any event is our exaggerated belief in its horror, rather than anything intrinsically horrible about it. It reminds me of corporate layoffs. Especially the relationship between the those who have been let go, and those who are left standing. For…
The thirst in your soul to feel something positive
There are some people for whom it takes an overwhelming amount of energy to scrape together good spirits. Whether life is good, bad or somewhere in between, their default mode is to shack up with doomsday possibilities and mire themselves in negative hope. It’s like the world is a huge dark room in which they develop their negatives. Optimists, however, are people who understand the difference between today and…
Under attack by an army of angry acronyms
If you’re a people pleaser who tries to avoid conflict and confrontation at all cost, it’s likely that your desire to be kind will suppress your anger. You will forego your real feelings to keep the peace. And as a result of that rage not being metabolized, it can turn into resentment, sarcasm, passive aggression or something worse. The goal, then, is not to get angry and scream and…
Developing a healthy dependence on other people’s support
Most of us are so unregulated emotionally that we use everything from food to alcohol to sex to work to drugs regulate our feelings. And that’s why it’s such a challenge to contain our desires and be uncomfortable for a minute or, god forbid, a whole day. It’s far too miserable. And so, we try to find in things what we are afraid to ask for from other people. …
Whatever safety and security you have persuaded yourself to settle for
It’s nice to not want something. In a world where we’re constantly being told what we should want, what we ought to have a burning desire for, what pang of longing we had better have twitching inside of ourselves, lest we be viewed as not fully human; it’s deeply relieving to announce with relaxed confidence, not for me. Without excuse or explanation or justification or guilt. The hard part…
