It's been said that we always look our best in our resumes. While most resumes are basically honest - if somewhat overly flattering - pictures of what we've done, they don't quite get to the point of who we are. Here's a fun exercise to help you paint that picture in a slightly different way: [...]
My friend and colleague, Jim Kranzusch, is a chimp. I'm pretty sure he's always been a chimp. He has even turned "chimp" into a verb ("I chimped him."). Jim has a track record of being an effective manager, a natural leader, and a wise counselor - all due in no small part to the fact that [...]
Years ago at IBM I was promoted to a job in division headquarters. It was a nice step up on the corporate ladder, a chance to get some "inside baseball" and learn how the business worked from that side of a paycheck. One of my first assignments was to design a "platform" to better support [...]
Do you ever feel like you're arguing with idiots? Most of them actually aren't (idiots). Some probably are. For those, remember, "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." (Wm. G. MacAdoo) In most business and professional discourse someone has to be the grown up and it might as well be you. Here's [...]
Scenario One: During a recent phone conversation with friend who had just shut down his business of 23 years he reminded me of a scene from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises where the main character, Mike Campbell, is asked "How did you go bankrupt?" The answer was "Gradually... then all of a sudden." Scenario Two: Last week [...]
According to vulture-territory.com, the California Condor has been protected since 1953 and was listed as an endangered species in 1971. By 1986, for a variety of reasons, the wild populations had sunk to single digits. Soon the three remaining California Condors were captured and joined twenty-four others in captivity. The birds have adapted reasonably well [...]
To say that I was an eager first time father would have been a great understatement of the facts. I was excited. Scared. Thrilled. Uncertain. Confident. Expectant (in a somewhat different way than my wife). The main thing I wanted was to be prepared; I'd never been a father before and I didn't want to [...]
"Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you." is one of the most memorable lines from the song Anything You Can Do which was composed by Irving Berlin for the 1946 Broadway musical, Annie Get Your Gun. The song is a spirited duet, with one male singer and [...]
My mother was a third grade teacher. There was a boy in her class one year who had been socially promoted through first and second grades without having learned to read. You can imagine the host of other problems this created for him academically and socially. My mother decided this would not stand and it [...]
I love the 4th of July. Even when considered in the ever-dimming light of history, it captures much of what has been exceptional about the United States. This morning at church we celebrated and honored, as we always do, those who have served this country in the cause of freedom and liberty. Part of that [...]
