The theme of Michael Bungay Stanier’s new book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone is building what he calls the Best Possible Relationship (BPR), be that with a boss, subordinate, colleague, or client. “Most working relationships aren’t disastrous,” he writes, “but every working relationship has its share of hurts and misunderstandings and frustrations.” Surely we agree that Shirley from sales…
Say Cheeeeese!
Scraped – ouch. Our faces have been scraped off the internet more often than we likely realize, even those of us who are camera shy and loathe selfie culture. Why? Because there’s value in tracking our movements and whereabouts, silly. Facial recognition – pre-regulation, anyway – is a lucrative industry and yet controversial as all get out, with Google and…
Keeping It Together… Kinda
Pop quiz, hot shot: think of your favorite business book and distill the description of it down to a couple of words. (Might be a raucous way to liven up your next dinner party, no?) I’d boil down Burn Rate to “willful ignorance.” Author Andy Dunn, erstwhile CEO of Bonobos, practiced this over most of the decade following the launch…
The Madness of Herd Mentality
“I was, to be completely honest, starting to feel as if I had absolutely no sense of reality.” Among all the sharp commentary made by journalist Gabrielle Bluestone in her 2021 offering, Hype that was a line that stood out. While the book is primarily about the spectacular fraud called the Fyre Festival, it was Bluestone’s deep research into the…
With Friends Like These
Peter Thiel’s high school classmates voted him Most Likely to Succeed. Good call, kids – at least on the face of it. Assuming mid-80’s San Matteo youth would have defined success as making scads of dough, their boy Theil (pronounced like the greenish color) has checked that box several billion times. But if they reconnected with him via PayPal or…