Blog

Recently a woman asked me if wearing a nametag was my security blanket. It’s a fascinating question. One that can be answered from both sides. Because on one hand, a security blanket is a comfort object. It provides someone with psychological relief, especially in unusual or unique situations. It’s essential to that person’s mental and emotional wellbeing. Whatever the inanimate object is, irrational as their attachment may be, it…

Japan has historically run the best railway grid in the world. But recently, they began investing in a two year project which will save, get ready for this, exactly one minute on a single train route. Thanks to that few extra kilometers per hour, passengers now have a commute that is a whole sixty seconds shorter than before. The best part about this story is, their transit authority has been…

Hostage negotiation consultants who run bank robbery prevention trainings have a mantra. Ignore human nature at your own peril. One of the tactics they teach to tellers is to disclose personal information. If your bank is being held up, and the robbers start shoving you across the room, introduce yourself. Repeat your name over and over again. Humanize yourself and condition the robbers to know who you are. It…

One of my core arguments for why everyone should wear nametags is, dishonest and uncivil behavior becomes more difficult to do. With nametags, we give others the gift of security by letting them know who they’re dealing with. There’s nothing to hide behind. Our identity is always verified. There’s a social construct that forces us to sign our work and take a stand for our identity. There is no…

Kohn’s seminal book stands as the definitive critique of competition. Contrary to accepted wisdom, he explains, competition is not basic to human nature. When life become an endless succession of contests, when our work is structured upon the need to be better than, and when our time is spent busy struggling to outdo others, we are actually poisoning our relationships and holding ourselves back from doing our best. And…

Graves, a pioneer in human consciousness theory, explained that we are always engaged in the process of becoming something more than we were, and not yet what we will be. When challenges come up that we can’t solve at our present level of being, he says, we make a leap to a newer, higher order system biologically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. He dubbed this theory spiral dynamics, since the psychology of…

Institutions, organizations and bureaucracies of any kind seek the same thing. People who comply, not grow. Which makes sense from an operational perspective. Compliance is extremely easy to measure, test, teach and scale. That’s what any of us would be doing if we ran a multimillion or billion dollar organization. Buckminster, the legendary innovator and visionary, once observed that governments, religions and businesses would find it devastating to their…

There was a time when the young, naïve and paranoid version of you wondered to yourself: How did you get here? What are you even doing here? Can you believe you got away with this? Is this a coup or what? Resulting in the final pressure cooker thought of, you better fucking be good. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Happened to me well into my thirties. But there…

Years ago, a producer from the biggest morning show in the country sent me an email. She was shooting a segment about wearing nametags, and seeking an expert to offer commentary on the topic. Initially, nobody came to mind. And since she was on deadline, they almost abandoned the piece. But then the producer did some quick googling on the phrase nametag expert, and only one person came up. Yours…

Trauma isn’t exclusive to military combat, sexual harassment or catastrophic events. Trauma, by definition, can simply be something out of the ordinary for you. A therapist once gave me a definition of trauma in six words. Too much, too soon, too fast. Meaning, most of us have been probably been traumatized in one way or another. Because we all have found ourselves overwhelmed in some out of control and…