There’s a small part of your brain called the RAS: Reticular Activating System. The RAS is the gateway for nearly all sensory input entering the brain. The RAS works like a bouncer outside a nightclub. It decides what information to let in, what to keep out, and which information should be treated like a “VIP”. Excepting … Read more
When you’re asked, “How’s your week going?”, is your gut response to say: Crazy Busy? If so, you’re not alone.Crazy Busy – constant urgency – has become the new normal.Only there’s one problem. If everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent.There are things in life that demand urgency. A heart attack. A house on fire. … Read more
On a business trip to New York City this week, I stopped in at the newly opened Whole Foods Market at Bryant Park. In case you don’t know, Bryant Park sits smack dab in the middle of midtown Manhattan. It’s about as bustling a spot as you’ll find anywhere in NYC. It looked like everyone … Read more
Chess is not the easiest game to play. Chess also isn’t the easiest game to teach someone else how to play. I’ve spent the past two weeks trying to teach the fundamentals of chess to my nine year old daughter, Miranda. What’s particularly challenging is explaining the idea of long term thinking. Miranda gets how … Read more
The strangest thing happened to me last week. I was at BDL, also known as Bradley International Airport, just north of Hartford CT. BDL is my home airport, and I’ve flown in and out of it hundreds of times. On the way to my departing gate, as is sometimes the case, I had to use the … Read more
Innovation: Creating value by doing something better by doing it a new or different way. That “something better” could be many things: A new product A refined process An improved way to collaborate Innovation doesn’t have to mean a radical change -incremental tweaks are innovative, too. Given this broad definition of innovation, everyone can be innovative. … Read more
Do you have to manage more information than ever before? Is change hitting you faster than ever before? Welcome to the two-headed monster of today’s work world. We’re living in an age of complexity—one that shows no signs of going away or slowing down. Everyone’s dealing with the challenges of more, faster and bigger. ‘Doing … Read more
How’s your day going? Busy. Really busy. Crazy busy.Shouldn’t this interchange be officially banned? After all, isn’t ‘busy’ what’s expected? Isn’t busy–and its variants (full, jam-packed, maxed-out, loaded-up) the new normal? You’re busy. Wow. Join the club. According to research from the Society for Human Resource Management, 70% of employees work beyond scheduled time and on … Read more
Organizations, by their very nature, are designed to create processes and systems. There’s a good reason for this: there’s a need for the various parts to work together to create outputs. On one hand, this makes sense: without results, we won’t stay in business. But on the other hand, there’s a flaw in the design: … Read more
The professional basketball league (NBA) is about halfway through their 82 game regular season. The #1 ranked team in the Eastern Conference is the Cleveland Cavaliers. Last season’s Eastern Conference Champions, the Cavs currently have a record of 30 wins and 11 losses. On Friday, they fired their head coach, David Blatt. Yes, you read … Read more
