Well we enjoy Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, so this year, as Valentine’s Day was falling on Sunday, we opted to have our amorous outing on the “eve”.
Many pooh pooh this holiday calling it commercially contrived, historically dubious (as if our other holidays aren’t?) and more.
It’s irrelevant. It’s a day to focus on love, [...]
I’ve always urged that consultants are at their best when they help clients interrogate assumptions posing as facts. The almost “holy” question is, “How do you really know that?” Assumptions lead us often into a cul-de-sac of our own paradigms.
The other danger is what is called “research”. All of us can skew “statistics” in infinite [...]
I am repeatedly astonished by various sins of omission.
First example, many people don’t read or grasp agreements. I can’t list the number of clients we write to, detailing an offer, with clear terms and conditions, who write back enthusiastically and say, “Let’s go!” Then, having broken ground, asking them to make time, to be responsive [...]
Each year if in New York for New Year’s Eve, my wife and I “run away from home”. We live on 56th, just off Park Avenue in New York. So to escape the bedlam of midtown Manhattan and to ensure we aren’t even tempted to go tromping through the winter slush in the direction of [...]
A man attempted to set ablaze if not blow up a flight headed from Amsterdam to Detroit. The flight originated in Nigeria, and the alleged perpetrator (not so “alleged” as he put himself on fire!) was on a terrorist watch list.
Why was he allowed to get on a plane, particularly one headed to the US? [...]
Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times that Tiger Woods should be nominated “person of the year”. Why? Because the chasm between his public persona and his frenzied personal antics and peccadilloes seems emblematic of a rather tawdry decade, book-ended by Enron and Woods, with Iraq war fictions and sub-prime meltdowns in between.
We have [...]
Superlatives tend to be gushed too readily. “The best ever,” “amazing”, “world class”, etc. But what can you say about the annual event at Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneve, where each year, a highly bespoke wine event, manages to outdo rational expectations?
Last year, we tasted all the Bordeaux First Growths in the extraordinary 1947 [...]
Relationships matter now more than ever.
This is sometimes assumed to be a tropism, a natural or innate tendency.
It’s not. It’s a cultivated skill, propensity and reflex. To relate to someone is to first understand them and connect with them on their own terms. It is secondarily to understand how to be [...]
Why do we feel we have to strike a haughty tone when dealing with people?
Years ago the researchers behind Transactional Analysis (TA) warned us of the dangers of Parent-Child conversations. Being chided, either the child in us pouts and huffs off — or erupts, or our own Paternal counter-judgement is invoked — [...]
Test your intelligence by challenging it, flexing it, extending it, giving it a novel work-out, or deploying it in an uncertain situation to create new and unanticipated value. The more you ask of your intelligence, the more it will give back.
Give the best possible information you can to others. Be clear, complete, [...]