You’re No Steve Jobs
I'm hooked--I lust after Apple products. As soon as a new product is released, or even just an iteration of a product, I have to have it.
It's not just the functionality I'm after, but the physical product itself. My Iphone, Ipad, and Macbook Air are works of art, and I experience a rush of aesthetic pleasure when I use them. I feel bad for those people (and a little superior) that have to use those clunky products from competitors.
[ Read more ]Neuroporn
I hate to disappoint you, but this post is not about salacious content that titillates our neurons. The term neuroporn, according to the New York Times, has been coined to describe the blatant overreaching of neuroscience.
You know a topic is hot when it's referenced in the President's State of the Union and 100 million dollars is allocated to fund research into it.
[ Read more ]What Lady Gaga Can Teach Us About Creating Better Power Points
While I don't think there are any documented cases of people actually experiencing "death by power point," we are all familiar with the experience of being pummeled into unconsciousness by an endless succession of slides dense with data.
And the beauty of the human mind is that even though we have suffered through other's power points, we are perfectly able to deceive ourselves into believing that our succession of slides dense with data is somehow different.
[ Read more ]Why Football Players Pat Each Other on the Butt and Other Lessons of Leadership
(Originally published in "Psychology Today")
What would I say in a talk on leadership to a professional sports team, Kaitlynn Myers, a Yale psychology student, asked me in an email, and all I've been thinking about since is how to answer her question.
It’s usually people from sports that are brought into coach business groups, not the other way around. Lou Holtz, the former head coach of the Notre Dame football team, is a fixture on the business lecture circuit, but I never hear of the steel industry’s turnaround artist Wilbur Ross being brought into address a struggling football team. We hear often of inspiring speeches in the locker room, but they’re a rare occurrence in the conference room.
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