Losing, perhaps frequently and badly, could be one of the most important steps in taking the lead in business and in life

Just about everyone has experienced failure and defeat, and none of us like it when that happens. Yet losing may be an essential precursor to winning. In a world where change is the only [...]

On 30th Street in Boulder, CO there is a sculpture of a man chiseling himself out of a block of stone.
The man’s head, torso, arms, and thighs have already been carved from the stone. His right hand holds a hammer above his head ready to strike a chisel he grasps in his left [...]

Before we accept the notion that organizations should focus on keeping “good” workers and let the rest go, maybe we should ask ourselves what “good” means?

What is “good work?” What does a “good” employee do that others don’t? It may seem like a silly question, but it’s the silly questions that are often the most [...]

What happens when simple over-confidence leads to a nightmare of tension and lies?

There’s a reasonable belief that a healthy dose of self-esteem is necessary in a leader; that a person placed in charge of important activities needs to be courageous in facing problems and confident in his or her ability to overcome problems and obstacles. [...]

I don’t always provide a link between what I write here and guests posts I have written for other blogs, but if you aren’t a regular reader of Lifehack.org, you may want to pop over there and look at my article entitled Productivity maybe . . . but for what purpose?
In the piece, I raise [...]

Why you shouldn’t trust what the numbers tell you unless you’ve taken care to check out your own biases first

It seems that “doing the numbers” doesn’t provide the dose of objective realism that it’s claimed to give — at least according to some research from Wharton Business School.
I believe this is worth thinking about carefully; [...]

I came across this picture on the web recently. I think it shows the perfect attitude to take to working on the computer. It can also be seen as a perfect example of sleeping on a problem.
A bit of nonsense, I know, but sometimes it’s worth it to relax a little. Animals are what they [...]

The grip of fashion, group-mindedness, and conformist organizational cultures

One answer to the question of why organizations are often badly run becomes clear once you consider the possibility that managers are using rational — even reasonable — responses in response to what are fundamentally irrational corporate systems.
Economists have always assumed that economic behavior is basically [...]

High achievers are often highly superstitious as well

There’s an interesting article in Psychology Today about magical thinking: what happens when our natural ability to find and recognize patterns in events goes a little haywire and we start to believe (or half believe, which is enough) in some strange link between events and the outcome [...]

Let’s be clear. Motivation is nothing more than finding ways to get other people to do what you want; what, in many cases, they’re paid to do anyway. It isn’t mysterious. It’s not some obscure, magic art. People do what they feel they ought to do — just as long as they are clear about [...]