Reflections

Reflections on Martin Luther King and Leadership

January 16, 2012

How do you measure great leadership? Inspiring people? Changing the world? Remaining true to oneself while fighting for larger truth? Eloquence? Honesty? Power? However you measure it, Martin Luther King was a great leader. He was courageous, inspirational, eloquent, and amazingly effective. He changed the world while standing for right against wrong, not letting the [...]

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Surprising Truths About Motivations

January 9, 2012

Do you know the RSA Animate technique? Have you seen it before? This is a great example, and it’s also a good business lesson, about motivation. What’s surprising? Well, to start out, money doesn’t motivate people to do thinking tasks better. It does for simple mechanical tasks — people work harder for more money — [...]

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Ask Yourself These 3 Questions About Your New Year’s Resolutions

December 29, 2011

I posted most of this just about a year ago. It was during that delightfully quiet last week before the new year begins. I was sipping a really good cup of coffee, listening to some of my favorite music, and thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Business or personal, it’s no coincidence that a lot of [...]

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Reflection: 10 Lessons Learned in 22 Years of Successful Bootstrapping

December 28, 2011

(I posted this about two years ago on Small Business Trends. I’m reposting it here today because this is a good time of year for this kind of reflection. And maybe also for not writing a new post. Tim ) Last week a group of students interviewed me, as part of a class project, looking for [...]

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Thanksgiving: Gratitude is Good for Your Health

November 24, 2011

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. It’s supposed to be about getting together and giving thanks. My contribution to the Thanksgiving holiday is to recommend a Google search on the correlation between gratitude and health. It turns out that there are indications that being thankful is good for us all. Of course [...]

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What Is An Entrepreneur? Says Who? Why Do You Care?

October 24, 2011

I used to start a university class on entrepreneurship by asking the class to define the word entrepreneur. It’s a reasonable question. News and discussion is full of pat phrases about entrepreneurs, most of which we take for granted. Politicians talk about entrepreneurs along with job creation, small business, motherhood, and apple pie. Challenge: find [...]

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My Niece’s Question About God

October 7, 2011

What a week. Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace. On Wednesday we distributed my stepmother’s ashes. That same day my brother’s wife buried her father. After our ceremony in Cape Cod, my brother said his daughter had asked: “why does God make people get old and die?” Nobody there could answer that question. Several [...]

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Steve Jobs on How to Live Before Dying

October 6, 2011

I’m really sorry that people have to get old and die. This is my tribute to Steve Jobs. If you don’t see it here, please click here for the original.

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So You Think You’re Smart? Prove It.

September 20, 2011

I’ve become increasingly more convinced that the best sign of real intelligence is being able to see both sides, or all sides, or any argument. You might call that having an open mind. You might call it listening. And you might call it having the good sense to say “I don’t know” a lot. I [...]

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When Your Gut Screws Up Your Analysis, Shut Up and Listen

August 24, 2011

True story: my wife and I wanted to move but we weren’t sure where. In true MBA fashion, I set up a spreadsheet to compare candidate locations for a series of factor including outdoor sports, weather, smog, traffic, lifestyle, public education, crime, and so on. So for each of about 12 possible places I input [...]

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