Amazon link In 1969, Barry Oshry decided to run a simulation on institutional racism called “the Society of New Hope” so that people could take on different roles in society and see how that unfolded. To his surprise, it quickly spun out of his control, as the “Have Not”s disabled the cars in the parking […]
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Amazon link This book is an excellent primer on its full title: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference, and Why It Matters. As somebody who generally had an intuitive feel for strategy throughout my career, and has had difficulty trying to explain how to see what I see, I appreciated Rumelt’s systematic explanation, and will […]
You don’t have the answer
One of my pet peeves is when people tell me what I should do. Normally, this is because they did something that worked for them, and they want to tell me I should also do it. I generally don’t want such advice for a variety of reasons: I don’t want the same thing that they […]
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 […]
The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel
Amazon link [n.b. I read this a while ago when it came out in 2020, but never got around to writing it up. But I just listened to Housel’s interview with Tim Ferriss which reminded me of the many valuable insights from the book, so I thought I’d spend the time to pull this together. […]
So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
Amazon link I was recently reminded of this book, and decided to read it during Black History Month. It’s a good introduction for those that want to educate themselves on racism in America. The book shares Oluo’s perspective on intersectionality, police brutality, affirmative action, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and the school-to-prison pipeline. I particularly liked her […]
Building a Community of Alignment
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead In my first post on alignment, I wrote “Alignment is the art and craft of creating or identifying a unifying purpose and a set of elements or parts, and then […]
100 Hours
Show me your calendar, and I’ll show you what you value. Our most precious and irreplaceable resource is time. We have approximately 100 hours each week to spend after sleep and basic self-care. How we spend those 100 hours is an observable expression of our values and priorities that can often be at odds with […]
2021 Year in Review
2021 was quite a year. Let’s start this review post by listing off a few significant events in my priority areas of family and coaching: Our second child was born in the spring. She exhibits intense curiosity, with a desire to be where the action is – she has serious FOMO! Meanwhile, our first child […]
Creating Alignment with Others
I’ve described leadership as the art of identifying gaps between what is and what could be, and mobilizing others to address them. In the alignment series thus far, I have been addressing the identifying gaps part of leadership in identifying your own gaps for personal development, identifying an aspiration to orient your actions, and identifying […]
