Leadership
The Problem with Goals
I’ve personally witnessed the value of taking time out to really consider the future, of brainstorming, and of having a healthy and broad conversation with your organization’s best interests at heart. Goals can be important. The opposite is also true. Progressive businesses are taking the view that thorough planning is ill-suited for our super fast [...]
How to Be Free (in life and business) [video]
Download this as a one-page .pdf. credits: music: “utopia (instrumental)” by yacht used under a creative commons attribution noncommercial sharealike license. font: blackout by league of moveable type used under a creative commons attribution sharealike license. Make a livelihood. Grow your business. Join the list. Enter your email below:
Choose Your Own Economy
Note: This post first went out on the subscriber list. It’s a taste of what happens there. Words I manifest OK–if I were the manifesto writing type, I’d have enough for a manifesto! A set of values and a mission. But the mission needs a bit of refining, wouldn’t you say? Rebranding small business is a [...]
Back to Square One
It’s time to relaunch. And it’s happening in front of a live studio audience. I’m going to be avoiding the blog here a little bit. And getting pretty uncut as it all unfolds on the list. So if that appeals to you sign up. See you ’round the bend! Sign up for the list by putting [...]
“How Do I Know I’m in the Middle?” and Other Amazing Questions About the Weird Middle
Things are changing. Big things are on the horizon. The excitement is too much! I’m jumping out of my skin and I can’t really keep it to myself anymore. Yesterday I conducted the first Secret Underground Lab LIVE Transmission group call. I invited a handful of business owners to submit questions about “The Weirdness of the [...]
Buy a Book, Save a Life: An Interview with Michael Bungay Stanier
In case you hadn’t heard, today is End Malaria Day. I wanted to share with you an interview that I conducted with Michael Bungay Stanier, author of Do More Great Work and editor of a new collection of essays called End Malaria. The title refers to the book’s primary purpose: to sell mosquito nets. $20 of [...]
Concentrate on Your Message. The Medium will Take Care of Itself.
As the author, BLAST publisher, cubist painter, modernist, futurist, critic and rabblerouser Wyndham Lewis knew, it’s all about the application of your creativity and putting in the work. Concentrate on your message, worry less about the tools, just be creative and do it. The medium will reveal itself. Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen, [...]
Hiring is for Lovers: Designing Organizations for Creativity and Impact
The importance of building an exceptional team is sometimes minimized by creative business owners. It is a “secondary task” unrelated, at least superficially, to the work we deliver to clients, often triggered under duress by an event: a huge new client project to ramp up for, a round of VC funding, the opening of a [...]
It’s the End of Planning as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
The death of strategic planning has been greatly exaggerated. But it’s true that we’re at a moment in time where top-down planning is less and less effective. Rather than set a plan and rigid parts to have others deliver on it, as a leader it’s more efficient to set strategic direction and then hand over [...]
Interview: charity: water’s Paull Young Talking Strategy and Teams
I met Paull Young when I had the opportunity to visit charity: water‘s offices for a studio talk during The 99% Conference. I was immediately taken with the power of the organization’s brand and depth of their commitment to solving the world’s water crisis, and also with Paull’s affable style and considerable expertise. I knew [...]
