The Walk More, Wait Less Innovation
Think about this problem. You run an airport. It takes on average 8 minutes for luggage to go from plane to baggage claim. Customers can walk to baggage claim in one minute, resulting in 7 minutes of impatient waiting. Complaints are high. What do you do? Conventional wisdom says, speed up the process. Use more […]
How Goals Kill Luck
Richard Wiseman is the author of many great books, including The Luck Factor. I’ve spoken with Richard on several occasions, and we share a similar perspective: a myopic focus on goals can reduce how lucky someone is. Dan Pink (an endorser of my Goal-Free Living book, and author of A Whole New Mind and Drive), interviewed Richard for Fast Company […]
How to Increase the Probability of Your Success
My next article in the series on success… You can mathematically increase the likelihood of your success when you are not obsessed with specific goals or approaches to achieving those goals. Let me illustrate this with the famous “birthday game.” Here’s the extremely short version… If you have a room of people… for there to […]
Never Trust An Expert
Given my recent articles on success, I felt it was appropriate to dig up an old one (from 2007) which talks about how we never really know what made us successful…. A couple of nights ago, I gave a presentation to a group of eager individuals who are either launching or advancing their speaking careers. During […]
Books in Portuguese
Best Practices Are Stupid is now available in Portuguese. One version is for Brazil and the other for Portugal.
Sliding Doors Failure
In an earlier article, I discussed the Sliding Doors Success model. It is worth noting that there is a corollary to this: The Sliding Doors Failure model. Just as an opportunity can appear that can change your life for the positive (read the Sliding Doors Success article), one event can derail a lifetime of achievement. […]
Turning the Screw
This is the 5th article in a series on alternative paths to success… I was once told a story while working at UPS. At its Louisville, Kentucky, air hub, hundreds of thousands of packages go through the sorter every day. This is a critical operation that is supported by a complex conveyor system. If the […]
Why Chuck Hates Me
This is the 4th in series of articles about alternative paths to success; ones that go beyond the traditional approach of goal-setting and years of hard work. Back in 1987, I was working for Accenture (then Arthur Andersen’s management consulting division). I was working on a large project with over 200 people. I had been out […]
My Father's Role in My Success
Today is my father’s birthday. To celebrate, today’s blog entry is dedicated to him, and one of the (many) ways he helped me be more successful. This is the third in my series of blog entries on success. From an early age, my father always said, “Everything happens for a reason.” He didn’t mean it in a […]
Sliding Doors Success
This is the 2nd in a series of articles on different paths to success… In the movie “Sliding Doors,” Gwyneth Paltrow runs to catch a train. If she misses it, she will miss an important meeting. The movie continues down two different paths: She just makes the train and attends her meeting. The doors close just […]