Who cares what you got on the test if you have a superpower?

Barnum was the greatest showman because he knew how to create a bold strategy to conjure up a storm of interest in his work. Media referred to his shows as humbugs, which weren’t lies, but events put on to arouse public curiosity. According to his biographer, he put on glittering appearances and novel expedients, by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear. Barnum knew people would be entertained and that they would get their...

Draper, television mad man extraordinaire, made an entire career out of ethical lapses. On the first episode of the show, he switched the dog tags of a dying soldier during the war and assumed that man’s identity back home. Then, for the remainder of the series, he lied his way to the top of the ad agency with numerous morally ambiguous business practices. My favorite scene is when a coworker asked him the rhetorical question, how do you sleep at...

During a recent family holiday dinner, our poodle shaggy plume of a tail knocked my drink onto the hardwood floor. Splattered everywhere, including onto my shoes. My mother about had a heart attack, while a few other relatives gasped audibly. But for some reason, it didn’t bother me. Not even in the slightest. There was no pet scolding, hand wringing, pulse racing or expletive screaming. While continuing my conversation with my cousin, I grabbed some napkins, wiped up the floor,...

Despite being the world’s foremost expert on nametags, labeling is something that I try to stay away from. Not physically, obviously, as there has literally been a label on my shirt every day for over twenty years of my life. But the practice of mentally, intellectual and emotionally labeling myself, that’s a different story. It’s just so tempting to grossly dismiss my own value by virtue of slapping a word onto my identity. My ego says that labeling is a...

Harvard’s business journal published a fascinating article written by a professor of psychology. Markman writes that when something has gone wrong at work, people blame lack of communication. The assumption is that greater access to information is the solution. But before you leap into action, and in the process create a lot more work for yourself, let me suggest that you think of the complaints about communication problems as the canary in the coal mine. It’s a signal that something is wrong,...