Pick a Card, Any Card…

Everyone loves a magic show, and especially trying to figure out how the trick was pulled off. And yet the first rule of magic is that 90% of the time, the trick was over before you even knew it began.

MEETING CHALLENGES

Back when I was President of Red Lion Controls, I got to indulge my creative side by designing a series of posters for our various meeting rooms. They were slightly tongue-in-cheek, but they nonetheless made a series of important points.

Taking Time to be Brief

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Mark Twain’s famous quote hides a lot of truth behind its apparent absurdity. Brevity is not only the soul of wit, but also the soul of wisdom. Whether you are composing a letter, writing a corporate report, or managing […]

Blinded By Science

Are you in favor of science? Well, of course you are! How could you not be? And you’re in good company. Governor Wolf, describing his plan to reopen Pennsylvania, said that “We need to follow the science.” His party, the Democrats, seek to position themselves as “the party of science”. And our current president is […]

I Have Seen The Future…

“I have seen the future, and it works!” Thus exclaimed progressive journalist Lincoln Steffens on his return from the Soviet Union in 1919. Left in awe at the country’s central planning and its egalitarian ideals, Steffens felt sure it was a model for all of us, and one that was well-suited to his revolutionary tastes. […]

Electric Monks and the 100 Meters

“The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device [that] believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”

The Marginal Gig Economy

“Many of the gig economy’s business models are based on the twin fallacies of scaling marginal suppliers and permanently avoiding regulatory costs.”

Silicon Valley Hubris

“Google is so fat, dumb and happy that they can throw their money at any problem they like, with no real market pressures to keep them lean or focused. They can dabble at anything, but they will no more be experts in energy or life extension than a millionaire dilettante will be a great artist because he hires a famous painter as a part-time teacher.”

Is College Useful?

“It’s not just those who go on to drop out who suffer from the higher education bubble; it’s also the bright kids who would have done better pursuing a real job in industry, and putting their talents to work via on-the-job training.”

Reviving the Apprenticeship

“We have the realization, even among members of the educational class, that the way in which we are saddling our children with debt in a never-ending race to acquire credentials that have little relevance to their career has crossed the line from being merely inefficient to being deeply immoral.”