I’m typing this and you’re probably reading it on a mobile device. One of the things rarely commented on is how reading comprehension—that is understanding and integrating a concept that you have read about into your overall life experience—has changed since the rise of the Internet as well as the Read more…
Categorization is the way that we make sense as human beings of a chaotic world of choices and options. Case in point: Whenever we walk into a grocery store, the peas and the peanut butter aren’t on the same aisle. Peas are considered a vegetable (or a legume) and peanuts Read more…
The culture of immediacy that we have created with our digital social communication tools, has convinced our brains that problems of all kinds should be solvable immediately, to our specifications, and with little effort (or friction) on our part. Here are a few examples. Your mileage (and examples) may vary: Read more…
The issue is not the questions we ask. The issue is knowing the right questions to ask, at the right time, and about the right things. If you don’t know what the right questions are to ask because you don’t understand what’s happening in a conflict situation, then just blindly Read more…
Very often, during a conversation, an email exchange, or following a workshop, the question of “Now what?” comes to the forefront. Usually in talking about motivation, morale, or in creating the conditions that will make our workplaces better, a participant in the conversation will desire advice on how to get Read more…
Here’s the thing: The only person at work who can change the culture of where you work, is you. The only person who can manage adults as if they are adults, are other adults acting like adults. The only person who can ensure that products, ideas, and innovations ship on Read more…
We lose a little of ourselves when we outsource our memory to Google. But not in the obvious way that we think of. What we lose in the privacy (some would say inaccuracy) of memory is the ability to forget. And to be forgotten. The privacy of memory and the Read more…
A friend once pointed out that he doesn’t watch films that portray either a dystopic future (i.e. Children of Men or Blade Runner) or a utopian ideal (i.e. Avatar or Gattaca) because they tend to be less than realistic. There is a lot of talk (and writing) going around about Read more…
The hard questions aren’t ones that you just need to think about harder, to get to a binary answer. Binary answers. “What the other party wants to hear” answers. “Feel good” answers. Wrong answers. Right answers. The compelling issue is not that the questions are hard, or that they are Read more…
If the process of resolving a conflict doesn’t interest you too much… If you just want to “be done with it’ already… If you “just don’t care how it stops” just that it’s over… If you have “no dog in this fight”… If you are “just a disinterested observer”… Then Read more…