Kellogg on Branding

From Kellogg on Branding (2005,) from the marketing faculty of the kellogg school of management, I view branding as the creation of household gods, the mythic charter of our consumer culture. The brand is also a habitat in which consumers can be induced to dwell. In that dwelling, consumers domesticate the space, transforming it, and […]

Communicating Simply

From a HBR interview with General Electric’s former CEO-Chairman Jack Welch: For a large organization to be effective, it must be simple. For a large organization to be simple, its people must have self-confidence and intellectual self-assurance. Insecure managers create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick, convoluted planning books and busy slides filled with everything […]

Wonders Everywhere

American Zen teacher Joko Beck in Nothing Special: Practice isn’t simply being integrated or being healthy or being a good person, though all of these things are part of practice. Practice is about the wonder. If you want to check your own practice, the next time something comes up in your life that you can’t […]

Protecting the Downsides

Dean Yeong on protecting your downsides: When it comes to managing my finances, protecting downsides are far more crucial than maximizing growth and returns. The same works in running a business, growing a career, and having a life in general. To accomplish long-term growth, we need a solid foundation that protects us from unforeseen events, […]

Volume and Cost Structures in the Packaged Goods Industry

Warren Buffett at the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: It is true that in the packaged goods industry, volume trends for everybody—whether they’re fat or lean in their operation—volume trends are not good. And the test will be over time—you know, three, five years—are the operations which have had their costs cut, do they do […]

Uninterrupted Thinking & Focus

Bertrand Russell’s Autobiogrpahy (1951) reports of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s ability to focus: [Whitehead’s] capacity for concentration on work was quite extraordinary. One hot summer’s day, when I was staying with him at Grantchester, our friend Crompton Davies arrived and I took him into the garden to say how-do-you-do to his host. Whitehead […]

How Can You Be More Assertive at Work?

Alison Green on becoming more assertive at work, especially in the face of sexism: The problem: People were saying inappropriate and sexist things to me, and I kept getting too anxious to tell them to knock it off. Give up on ever having that perfect retort that would wither them to their bones, or beautiful […]

Voice to Young Women’s Long-unarticulated Feelings

Journalist Jessica Bennett from New York Magazine opined that Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (2013) finally gives women the “words to say what we’d long felt but couldn’t quite articulate.” Sandberg may never be feminist enough, grassroots enough, inclusive enough, mom enough for everyone. But she has labeled a solution for problems that are rampant among […]

Liberating Your Thoughts

American Zen teacher Joko Beck in Nothing Special: There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame […]

Don’t Expect Too Much of Human Nature

Charlie Munger at the 2019 Daily Journal Annual Meeting: Part of the secret of a long life, that’s worked as well as mine, is not to expect too much of human nature. It’s almost bound to be a lot of defects and problems. And to have your life full of seething resentments and hatreds, it’s […]