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Systems thinkers look at the whole, not just the parts. They judge the worth of a system based on its end to end effectiveness, rather than on how efficiently individual parts operate. Ackoff, the organizational theorist, consultant and professor, was one of the pioneers it the field of systems thinking. One of his notable rants was about the fallacy of efficiency. He said the righter we do the wrong…

Nametags are my favorite accessory, but also my favorite analogy. If there is a particular idea, story or experience that needs to be conveyed in an interesting and persuasive way, my default linguistic tool is to refer to it as a nametag. If an idea is sticky and playful and human and disarming, that’s a nametag. If there is a person who makes a small, simple effort to connect…

Phenomenology is the study of consciousness. How things appear in our own subjective, direct experience. Husserl, the founding father of this discipline, said that the number one job of the phenomenologist is to describe. To denote any ordinary thing or object or event as it presents itself to our experience, rather than as it may or may not be in reality. What’s beautiful about this philosophy is, it’s wildly…

Motivation doesn’t happen to us, it happens in us. Which means the question we should ask ourselves is, what is the cost of inaction? After all, if the pain of staying the same doesn’t outweigh the pain of change, then we will never create a strong enough reason to motivate ourselves. It’s the simple calculus of human motivation. People rarely do anything about their pain until it gets to…

Not all business is good business. Firing clients is a healthy practice for any company that wants to grow. But it should be done for the right reasons. Like when there’s too big a gap between the client needs and the firm’s abilities. Then it makes sense to part ways amicably. Or when the client is no longer lucrative for your business. Time to move on. Or maybe the client…

Caltech scientists recently did the impossible. Researchers were able to generate a ring of plasma in midair using only a stream of high pressured water and a crystal plate. The charge was thinner than human hair and was blasted from a nozzle that struck at about one thousand feet per second. They literally captured lightning in a bottle. Wow, isn’t that amazing? What we thought was just an old…

End times are not a matter of if, but when. And the moment god chimes the armageddon bell, you need a way to protect the future of those left behind. That’s why my new business idea is to launch an eschatological insurance company that will send policy holders notifications in the event of the rapture. If you are non responsive, our agents will deploy an end times care team…

Employees love to criticize their leaders for viewing and treating them as a means to an end. There are thousands of online reviews of companies whose former team members file complaints like, this company is just using its people to make profits! Meanwhile, the executive team is thinking to themselves, well, yeah, welcome to capitalism. Because the whole idea of labor has instrumental value, not intrinsic value. Work is…

It’s easy to be productive when it’s just you Or when it’s just a few of you. But as a company grows, hires more staff, takes on bigger projects and earns more revenue, that means it’ll have to start dealing with bigger, more complex operational issues. As a result, employees will likely make the following problem. There’s no time to get actual work done. Have you ever said that…

Have you ever heard of revenge consuming? It’s this thing we do when something has happened that annoys, inconveniences or angers us, and so, we eat, drink, shop, gamble, fuck, whatever, as a way of getting back at the person who wronged us. We’ve all done it before. Think back to when you were a kid and your mom made some comment like, honey, you shouldn’t be eating cookies,…