Adam Grant’s Give and Take was so good – indeed life-altering for anyone trying to embody a giving nature without becoming a doormat – that seeing he had a new release meant an instant purchase. Grant has proven to be a terrific writer who surely genuflects at the alter of Malcolm Gladwell and the Heath Brothers, having worked similar magic…
Book Report – Work Like a Spy by J. C. Carleson
We should ask questions but not be too nosy. Be friendly but not boisterous, confident but not arrogant, charismatic but not flashy. If these sound like tips you’ve read in a sales newsletter, it’s probably because you have. J.C. Carleson perfected these tactics as a CIA officer and shares them in her terrific book, Work Like a Spy. The reader…
Book Report – Beach Reads!
Enough already with the heavy reading. Let’s lighten it up a bit with these books that will enhance your beach, hammock, or rocking chair time this summer. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo – If you ever look around your home and wonder why you have so much stuff, here’s a book that will help you thin out…
Book Report – Disrupted by Dan Lyons
“People just go up in smoke, like Spinal Tap drummers,” writes Dan Lyons in Disrupted, reporting on just a small slice of the weirdness he experienced in his 20 months employed by the Kendall Square inbound marketing tech company HubSpot. Lyons arrived there in 2013 with grandiose ideas about creating corporate journalism, having been laid off by Newsweek (where he…
Lower the Bar, Not the Boom
At the Reno/Tahoe International Airport the other day, I witnessed a guy rip into his phone company in a pretty alarming way. Right there among the hungry slot machines and folks with kangaroo pouch bellies and roughly two months to live, this guy was screaming into his cell phone about some cock-up or another. He wasn’t even addressing a person…