John Warrillow has been studying entrepreneurs for fifteen years. First as the producer of a syndicated radio show, then as the founder of a research company that surveyed ten thousand business owners each year, and now as an angel investor and columnist for both Inc.com and CBS NEWS. As it happens, he has a terrific […]
Many of us know that one secret to generating good ideas is producing bad ideas. But if you look on your bookshelf or visit the best creativity and productivity blogs – or even ask Mr. Google “how to come up with bad ideas” — you won’t find much guidance. Thank goodness, then, for the brilliant
In this month’s Sunday Telegraph column, I strap on my spelunking gear and explore the most feedback-deprived cave in our civilization: The modern workplace. While the rest of our lives are rich in feedback — just look at the Tweet counter for this post or listen for the little sound your phone makes when you
Over at the HBR blog, Julia Kirby offers up an innovation that is brilliant (and that I wish I’d thought of myself.) You know how each year the MacArthur Foundation awards those famous genius grants? How about if organizations did something similar? In a great post, Julia lays out the evidence that unstructured time and
In this month’s Sunday Telegraph column, I look a the bizarre, distancing, and vaguely incoherent dialect we often use in business. Then I lay down a challenge: For the next seven days, don’t say anything to your boss, your staff, your teammate, your supplier or your customer that you wouldn’t say to your spouse or
For all the talk we hear about “work-life balance,” it sure doesn’t feel like life is getting any easier or work less stressful. Tony Schwartz’s new book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, looks at the four basic needs all human beings share once the bare necessities of survival have been met: the need for
Brandon Schauer at Adaptive Path has put together a 49-second video designed to invigorate your corpus callosum and fire your creative powers. In a blog post, he says that his creation builds on research showing that side-to-side eye movement, by increasing communication between the left and right hemisphere, can increase creativity. If you’re facing a
(A “video excerpt” of Drive, created by the fantabulous Lindsey Testolin.)
The inimitable Seth Godin has assembled a crew of five dozen thinkers and doers from around the world to tackle that question. In a remarkable collection of one-page essays, released today, each member of Godin’s dream team selects a single word — then uses it to offer guidance for the coming year. I especially liked
Management theorist Russell Ackoff passed away late last month, leaving behind a lifetime of memorable insights. Here’s one of my favorite, reprised in a good WSJ story about Ackoff’s life and legacy. “All of our social problems arise out of doing the wrong thing righter. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become.
