Books have always been popular Christmas presents. But just like other presents, many givers can completely misread the needs and likes of the recipients. We often fall into the trap of giving the most popular or most heavily promoted books. And it turns out we rarely read them. Many people have asked me recently for recommendations Full Article
There has rarely been a better time to quit. Everything appears to be changing. And changing faster than we ever expected. Old models are crumbling. Some new ones are emerging. There’s a lot of chaos in between. If you have been worried about the social impact of quitting, then maybe this is as good as it Full Article
In Break From The Pack – How To Compete In A Copycat Economy, Oren Harari challenges businesses to dominate some area of their market. And if they don’t, they should leave that market. He claims that companies that declare they intend to dominate everything wind up dominating nothing. This makes a lot of sense to me. Yet, Full Article
One of the advantages of living in a free society is that we have many choices available to us. Very few aspects of our lives are mandatory, even if some of us tend to lose sight of this at times. High value is placed on having multiple options. The more choices we have the better. The Full Article
As you read this, do you think you know what’s likely to happen in the months and years ahead? Can you predict your own future with confidence? It seems that many have perfected the science of prediction. If you read the papers, listen to the radio or watch TV, you will find a steady stream of Full Article
Imagine how different your childhood would have been if your mother was totally blind. Imagine how different your everyday routine would have been. Imagine how you would have communicated with her. This was the dilemma facing Andy Bounds as he grew up. He recalls how as a child, he sat on his mother’s knee and asked Full Article
One of the pleasures of working in the area of facilitated learning is the exposure to some fantastic insights from the latest thought-provoking business books. One such book, What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis is packed with ideas on how to prosper in the post-Google world. He introduces a number of ‘laws’, which, as he Full Article
I’m delighted to host another lunch-time session on April 21st that will focus on the lessons learned from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers; in particular the ‘Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes’, Chapter 7 in the book. This chapter is packed with extraordinary tales of disaster and reflects on how ineffective communication can be a Full Article
While I’m conscious of following a me-too pattern of end-of-year favourite lists, a number of people have asked me to reflect on the dozens of books that I have read in the past year. And so, here’s a list of ten books that I really enjoyed in 2008. Two clarifications: these are presented in no particular Full Article
