“By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said ‘no war for ten years.’ Nine years later World War II had begun.” – Lin Wells I’m sure we’ve all…
Blog Archives
The Problem of Prognostication
Tagged with: adaptability, agility, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Lin Wells, Obliquity, prediction, Success and Luck, Superforecasting, The HEAD Game, uncertainty
Posted in Leadership
Posted in Leadership
The Meeting for Decision
“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Teddy Roosevelt In The Reasons Why People…
Tagged with: David Pearl, decision-making, Franklin D. Roosevelt, meetings, Obliquity, Peter Drucker, Teddy Roosevelt, Will There Be Donuts?
Posted in Leadership, Management
Posted in Leadership, Management
Book Report: Why Should I Choose You?
“This book is about discovering your unique identity as an organization and being able to express that in a simple and compelling way. It is about revealing what it is about you that makes you uniquely remarkable at your very…
Tagged with: adaptive planning, business architecture, Charles Darwin, Core Beliefs, Core Proposition, Core Story, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Hedgehog Concept, Howard Lichtman, Ian Chamandy, Jack Welch, Malcolm Gladwell, Mind Gym, Obliquity, pitching, sales, strategic planning, taglines, The New Yorker, Why Should I Choose You?
Posted in Books, Marketing
Posted in Books, Marketing
Book Report: The Pentagon’s Brain
“Bob Taylor went to DARPA director Charles Herzfeld to request enough money to fund a networked connection linking four different university computers, or nodes. Herzfeld told Taylor he thought it sounded like a good idea but he was concerned about reliability.…
Tagged with: Annie Jacobsen, Castle Bravo, DARPA, Internet, killer robots, NASA, Obliquity, Skynet, technology, The Pentagon's Brain, warfare
Posted in Books, Math and Science
Posted in Books, Math and Science
Schedule or Fantasy?
“Often what looks like a perfectly good schedule turns out to be a fantasy – a wishful projection for how we might spend our very limited time.” – Bruce Tulgan in Not Everyone Gets a Trophy As I was reading Not…
Tagged with: Bruce Tulgan, Generation Y, inflation, Not Everyone Gets a Trophy, Obliquity, planning, schedules, tasks, uncertainty
Posted in Books, Careers, Leadership, Management
Posted in Books, Careers, Leadership, Management
Book Report: Born to Run
“That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on…
Tagged with: athletics, Born to Run, Caballo Blanco, chia fresca, Christopher McDougall, cross-training, Emil Zatopek, Herb Elliot, iskiate, Leadville, Lisa Smith-Batchen, Micah True, Mind Gym, Obliquity, Roger Bannister, running, Scott Jurek, Tarahumara, The Running Man, William James
Posted in Books, Math and Science, Sports
Posted in Books, Math and Science, Sports
Book Report: Obliquity
“In general, oblique approaches recognize that complex objectives tend to be imprecisely defined and contain many elements that are not necessarily or obviously compatible with each other, and that we learn about the nature of the objectives and the means…
Tagged with: Andrew Carnegie, Benjamin Franklin, David Beckham, eudaimonia, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin's Gambit, Goodhart's Law, hindsight bias, Homo economicus, John Kay, metrics, objectives, Obliquity, Robert McNamara, shareholder value, strategy, Winston Churchill
Posted in Books, Everything, Leadership, Management
Posted in Books, Everything, Leadership, Management
Incompleteness and problem solving
“Almost all real problems are incompletely and imperfectly specified.” – John Kay Did you ever notice that to solve most real-world problems of any complexity, we have to find ways to simplify the situation? Well, economist John Kay noticed, and…
Tagged with: closure, incompleteness, John Kay, Obliquity, prediction, problem solving, problems
Posted in Books, Everything, Leadership
Posted in Books, Everything, Leadership
Lessons from three stonemasons
In Obliquity, John Kay says: “An old story tells of a visitor who encounters three stonemasons working on a medieval cathedral, and asks each what he is doing. ‘I am cutting this stone to shape,’ says the first, describing his basic…
Tagged with: Alastair Campbell, autonomy, Daniel H Pink, Drive, Gavin Esler, Jack Welch, John Kay, Lessons from the Top, mastery, motivation, Obliquity, purpose, stonecutters
Posted in Books, Leadership, Management
Posted in Books, Leadership, Management
The pursuit of eudaimonia
“Eudaimonia is a high-level concept, a measure of quality of life, of flourishing, of fulfilling one’s potential.” – John Kay Sit down and strap yourselves in, ’cause I’m getting all philosophical up in here. The subtitle of John Kay’s book Obliquity…
Tagged with: Aristotle, Croesus, Daniel Nettle, eudaimonia, John Kay, Obliquity, philosophy, Plutarch, Reinhold Messner, satisfaction, Solon, Tellus
Posted in Books, Everything, Soccer
Posted in Books, Everything, Soccer
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