How the relatively new phenomenon I’ve called “Cultural Whistle Blowing” is rocking giants and creating opportunities for virtuous midsized companies – Cheetahs – to take share!
Today we read two telling and purposely public resignation letters. The first is from a high level executive at Google, the second from a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs (more…)
Capture, delegate and execute action steps. I’m told that Harvey Weinstein has two assistants that follow him around and catpure every single action step from every meeting and conversation.
Then they go down those lists and check off actions until they are all competed. Every day.
Harvey has acheived some miraculous things. A lot of miraculous things. In fact the list of things he’s produced on the Internet Movies Database includes 239 titles! And there’s a lot of good stuff here. In fact, you’ve got to see it…so here it goes…Read more.
We try to be good children. We have a report card of As and Bs and one C, and we focus on how to turn the C into a higher grade.
What’s wrong with us? Well, perhaps it starts with a question, What’s wrong with us. A better question is what’s different about us? And who can that matter and how?
The stone cold marketing fact is that it works much better to be different than better.
Would you rather be The Ground Round or Hooters, assuming business success were criteria. Let’s face it, there are a lot of restaurants offering greasy fries, dark decor and lots of undercooked beef.
But how many mammary-themed restaurant chains are there? (more…)
New York Times columnist Stuart Elliot writes,
CONTESTANTS on reality competition shows perform tasks like seeking spouses, racing around the world, eating bugs, losing weight, living in houses rigged with cameras and working for Donald J. Trump. A new series is arriving with a contest all its own: wooing advertisers to say yes to campaigns. (more…)
I don’t shoot the messenger. Ever.
When someone brings up bad news, raises a controversial subject, or just tells the ugly truth in a meeting, I go out of my way to praise the messenger right there and then.
I want to make an example of them for everyone else. THIS is what I’m looking for. Honesty. Openness. Realness. Challenge.
If you don’t do this, you will hear less and less of the truth. And then where will you be?
Early in my career, I came in to find I had a new boss. It wasn’t long before he shared with me the following priceless and absolutely useless advice, “Mark, being too smart can be a disadvantage in this business.”
Inside my big brain, I thank him every day for the motivation that remark still gives me. Every successful day of my career is at least in part a victory over the stupid, thoughtless, and hackish impulses that are inside of every one of us. (more…)
There are so many excuses. So many shades of red and yellow light. You need to see these for what they are, or you’re going to take “Wait” for an answer.
We never get all the facts. Speed chess masters. Champion poker players. Genius stock traders. Anyone who runs a business, a marketing campaign or a brand – they all have one thing in common. They make better decisions with nothing like all the facts.
In other words, they gaze into the same cloudy ambiguity that everyone else sees, and they choose a better path. (more…)
All of us. We are taught what it should be, but we’re not taught what to do about it.
Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals, the little firm behind revolutionary products like Ruby on Rails open source programming language and BaseCamp, writes in his wonderful book REWORK, “Start making something.”
He quotes director Stanley Kubrick’s advice to aspiring filmmakers:
“Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”
Kubrick knew that when you’re new at something you need to start creating. The most important thing is to begin. So get a camera, hit Record, and start shooting.
