The CEO is the Most Confident Man in the Company
I heard somewhere that one definition the Navy has of a ship’s captain is that he is, “the most confident man on the ship.” A CEO could be similarly defined. Why confidence as the defining quality for these leadership roles? It’s because these roles will ultimately have to deal with leadership in the absence of [...]
Seth: Netflix Avoided the Tragically Knowable
Seth Godin is perhaps my all time favorite blogger, and I have recommended him frequently. We mostly agree, but not this time. His recent post is trying to convey the need to “just do it” as Nike says, without a lot of testing and analysis. Godin is big on getting on with it and not [...]
Great Products Need Something Borrowed and Something New
Seth Godin, one of my favorite bloggers, has a great post on the value of clichés. His observation makes a lot of sense: we need the familiar to be able to lock in on a product or idea. Without it, whole new cognitive mindshare has to be built before we have a place to pigeonhole [...]
Divided We #FAIL
With all my dedicated passion for the social web and its inspirational, world-changing promise, people often wonder why I’ve chosen to focus on the enterprise. My answer is: because it’s hard and #ifnotyouthenwho? One of the last bastions of resistance to embrace the tenets of 2.0 philosophy is found in the large corporate culture. It also [...]
An author’s hour in heaven
When I started to write the book, a friend of mine wise cracked “All you need is a hairdo like Malcolm Gladwell’s”. You know I would kill for that hair But I am just as flattered by this comparison Tom Foydel makes between The New Polymath and Gladwell’s Outlier. Or the one Sadagopan makes with [...]
Forget Slick: Reputation, Transparency, and Guts
It’s been a little while since I wrote about a Seth Godin post. ‘Bout time. Godin is a must-read for me, and all of his posts are pithy, relevant, and urgent to understand. Today’s subject is a brief post entitled simply, “Slick.” We all crave slick. In media, it is a signalling device for success [...]
The Linchpin and The New Polymath – The Indispensable Individuals and Organizations
One of my favorite books of the year is the Linchpin by Seth Godin – it takes you on a journey from how our economy has evolved to a point where its neither necessary nor optimal for you to be a cog in the wheel of a faceless system that treats you as …
Great Read for Small Businesses and Startups: The Referral Engine
I loved John Jantsch’s book, “The Referral Engine“. Like the book jacket says, it’s about teaching your business to market itself. It’s funny, but I expected the book to be about something else from the title. I guess I had visions of multi-level marketing when I heard the word “referral”. While the strategies and tactics the [...]
Life Lessons from Warren Buffett Letter and Seth Godin’s Linchpin
I am an avid fan of Warren Buffett letters, and today is my lucky day because we have a new annual letter. And it comes with not just the update for the year but for the benefit of the new shareholders (due to partial stock deal in acquiring the Rail c…