Several years ago, Google ran a study to determine what made teams effective, and later published the results, including sharing a summary in a New York Times article. While one might think that an effective team depends on having the most capable individuals, Google’s researchers discovered that the members of the team mattered far less […]
Category: cognition
Organizational Cognition Revisited
[n.b. This post got completely out of control (2200 words!) as I tied together way too many ideas with too little explanation as I relied on heavy hyperlinking. Skip to the end for a couple actionable takeaways.] I recently read Jeff Hawkins’s book A Thousand Brains after Ben Thompson referenced it in a Stratechery update […]
How to retrain your brain
I was talking to a friend about how to change our view of the world, and found myself coming up with a theory of how mystical woo woo advice like “be the change you want to see” or “manifest what you desire” actually might be scientifically explainable. Disclaimer: I am not a neuroscientist, and have […]
Alignment to Self
Following up on my last post introducing the alignment model, I want to share how this model applies to personal development. When I first met Jerry Weinberg in person in 2009 at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, he talked a lot about congruence, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Admittedly, that’s […]
Bikepacking as a spiritual practice
As I mentioned in my last post, I went on a week-long bikepacking tour along the Lost Coast in Humboldt County a couple weeks ago (pictures here for those interested). I found the bike tour to be a surprisingly spiritual experience, so I wanted to share a bit about my experience. I realize that “spiritual” […]
Leadership Embodiment, by Wendy Palmer and Janet Crawford
Amazon link Book site n.b. I read and reviewed this book as part of my coaching program, hence the references to coaching throughout this post. Subtitled “How the way we sit and stand can change the way we think and speak”, this book is an introduction to how our physical presence influences how we act […]
What will you do differently?
As I have been doing more coaching over the last year, I have been seeing how some people tend to employ magical thinking. They believe that if they just think of what they want, then somehow it will magically happen. This is influenced by books like The Secret, which tout that visualizing what you want […]
Whistling Vivaldi, by Claude M. Steele
Amazon link Subtitled “How stereotypes affect us and what we can do”, this is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in a while. Diversity issues are everywhere these days, and they seem hopeless to overcome – when looking at a problem like why so few women are in technology, people argue about whether […]
Choose Action over Identity
I have just returned from the Overlap retreat and am, as always, buzzing with ideas and energy as a result. So I’m going to start writing here once again to document and explore some of those ideas. One powerful distinction that was discussed was the difference between identity (“I am”) and action (“I do”). This […]
Updating mental software and our reality
The new Wait but Why post, purporting to understand Elon Musk’s “secret sauce” in being so innovative is a very long, but great, read. And what Tim Urban suggests is that Musk is proactive in updating his mental software to reflect reality, and the real question he gets into is: why aren’t the rest of […]
