An early Baby Boomer, born in 1948 this post war pundit watched (pun intended) the beginning of the broadcast television age, featuring I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Ozzie and Harriet show, Leave It To Beaver, Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club, The Roy Rogers Show, Superman, Looney Tunes, Captain Kangaroo, The Howdy Doody Show and more.
Attributed to former US Senator and Governor Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, “Trust is built with consistency.” Moreover, from statistics we know that Internal Consistency, “measures whether several items that propose to measure the same general construct produce similar scores.” The follow on definition statistical reliability, “is the consistency of a set of measurements or measuring
Originally published as a LinkedIn article on July 6, 2021, this updated version is reprinted here with the permission of the author. Links to relevant sources are added. Lately, many LinkedIn posts bemoan the state of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The seeming slow take up of great ideas. Some argue that DEI initiatives are no
In a recent Harvard Business Review, I was struck by an article about Best Practices for small businesses. From that piece, “To successfully navigate Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) challenges like Covid-19, family business leaders can look to best practices from another organization that specializes in VUCA situations—the U.S. military’s Special Operations Forces (SOF)”
In the middle of a global pandemic, all of us who can are advised to work from home. Many of us have worked remotely for a while now. Whether traveling, dealing with sick children, avoiding traffic or dealing with a natural disaster remote management has become part of our business DNA. Yet, this pundit was
According to legend, the term KISS or ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ was coined by Kelly Johnson, lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works and noted by the US Navy as early as 1960. Subsequent phrases such as ‘Less is More’ followed. At first glance, it makes sense not to overly complicate a product, process or
Watch almost any media talk show and the interviewer will often interrupt the guest trying to answer the question just posed. This is such a common phenomenon that it is accepted behavior perhaps driven by ratings that come from on-air confrontation. It is part of the culture! Why ask the question if you’re only going
Years ago, as part of a never-ending series of company reorganizations, a team of our change management consultants headed to the ‘field’ to interview users. Upon their return, they presented an extensive list of technology investments deemed necessary to remain competitive. Their list focused on technology and not business concerns. Wondering, I asked who they
“Failures of culture have been the single biggest destroyers of value in the last five years,” states the former senior vice president of HR of Google in a recent article. This revelation by one of the contemporary tech giants supports the previous dictum, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Depending on one’s perspective, this latter quote
We live in a youth culture. As young Baby Boomers, we were going to change the world. Later other Gens would say the same. Is it now too late for those over 50 to attain entrepreneurial success? A serial (often failed) entrepreneur, (Kentucky) Colonel Harland Sanders sold his first franchised secret receipt for “Kentucky Fired
As the officers, seamen and passengers of the Titanic came to understand, it is not what you can see that gets you but what is below the visible surface. Visualizing the unseen remains a continuing challenge. The current president of the United States is by many accounts the most unlikely political victor. He is not
The April 13-14, 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an opinion piece by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Russiagate and the Media’s News Denial. The author makes the point, “Judgement is teachable. Long ago, in relation to the Enron debacle, I pointed to the work of Harvard’s Max Bazerman and Northwestern’s David Messick, who
We have long argued that people will change if they understand the new idea/technology value proposition—what’s in it for me? For some, this question is more difficult to answer than others. Moreover, we are all stuck! This age of digitalization may pass a few ‘off the grid’ hermits by, but for the rest of us
My apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson. The long forecast “Big Crew Change” is well underway and may in fact already be (mostly) over. Many “Baby Boomers” have left the building and the rest will follow shortly. For years, this pundit has heard the lament about how to capture their knowledge before they hit the golf
“Ergonomics (or Human Factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.” According to Gartner, “Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a
It is hard to believe we are now 19 years into the century. Seems like only yesterday we were worried whether the lights would stay on at Y2K. Each year many of us promise to do better at a list of things, some personal and some professional. Some days or weeks later, some or all
