• Men often falling stars…

    Men Often Falling Stars, Women Continue Shining Brightly. Why?  In February’s Harvard Business Review is a follow-up article stirring a bit of a backlash among men not taking the time to read. The controversy? About four years ago Boris Groysberg published an article (The Risky Business of Hiring Stars) noting that for most companies hiring away a… Continue reading →

  • The Existential Necessity of Midlife Change

    The Existential Necessity of Midlife Change So you think 50 is getting up there? Ready for the decline? Not any more. Average life expectancy in the US now hovers near 80, and for many of us, these become their most productive years. At 50 you’ve discovered your strengths, are comfortable in your skin, have learned… Continue reading →

  • Easily bored?

    Easily bored? If you’re easily bored, it’s also likely that you’re more prone to depression. According to those who study boredom, its sources, types and treatments, boredom appears to be determined somewhat by personality but also by choices we make. In short, boredom researcher John Eastwood of York University in Toronto says, “To be bored… Continue reading →

  • Pain Gets Largest Share of Attention

    Pain Gets Largest Share of Attention Do you know why it’s impossible to concentrate with a splitting headache, an aching back or the throb of carpal tunnel? There is a region of the brain responsible for processing both working memory and pain, and when you’re in pain, guess what gets priority. According to functional magnetic… Continue reading →

  • Amazing Ayumu

    Amazing Ayumu Ayumu is amazing. Numbers 1-9 flash across a screen for 210 milliseconds, less time than it takes the human eye to scan across the screen, before turning into white squares. Ayumu reaches out and touches each white box in the correct numerical order. The rest of Koyoto University’s subjects get the order right… Continue reading →

  • The Problem With Speed-Reading

    Do you tend to scan or speed-read through material to figure out what it’s all about? Go straight to the Executive Summary, then stop? You might be saving time, but you may be missing out on some of the most interesting content. In the 2001 DNA-sequencing race between the the government and Craig Venter’s Celera Genomics, victory was declared… Continue reading →

  • The bulk of time

    …the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to “problems” rather than to opportunities, and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimal impact on results. Peter Drucker in Managing for Business Effectiveness, 1963

  • The Topple Rate: How Fast Do Leading Companies Fall?

    Patrick Viguerie, a McKinsey & Co. consultant, has developed what he calls the Topple Rate: a measure of how many market-leading companies lose that status during the next five years. In the early 1970s, he says, it was about 8%. By the 1997-2002 period, it had climbed to 16%. Rigorous data for the past few… Continue reading →

  • Life Affects Performance, Even for CEOs

    My father would say, “I didn’t need a study to tell me that.” CEOs are human like the rest of us. Their performance suffers about 21% for the two years following the death of a child about 25% for the three years following the purchase of a mansion or an estate a less predictable but… Continue reading →