“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…
Book Report – Assholes by Aaron James
Whoa, wait – am I an asshole? Before reading Aaron James’ brilliant Assholes I never would’ve really thought so. Alas, the reader is forced to ponder the question, which makes good sense as the author is a philosopher after all. Just take driving as one example; a steady habit of cutting across lanes or weaving to position for advantage is…
Book Report – Saving Capitalism by Robert Reich
If you happened upon the Business section of the Sunday Globe on 3/20/16, you may recall a snippet that suggested there are two Bostons. A study by the Boston Redevelopment Authority contains “stark numbers that show few benefits from the economic boom going to those near the bottom of the income scale,” further concluding that nearly half of the…
The Perfect Average Day
When my day follows this pattern, I consider it pretty close to perfect: 5:00 Wake without yawning… 5:05 Stretch without pain… 5:10 Wonder who’s aboard that far-off sounding train – wait, not a poem! 5:15 Read 15 – 20 pages of a business book, hopefully retaining even 20% of it. 6:00 50+ minutes on the treadmill with CNBC’s “The Profit”…