Advice For New Managers: Develop Principles (Newsletter 033)
Advice from individuals, journalists, and experts is more than not useful. It's downright harmful, at least in the sense that it distracts you from focusing on what you could be more profitably doing.
Who Can Freely Speak Their Mind? (Newsletter 027)
Every senior manager and CEO I know is (typically rightly) paranoid that they are getting bad information from their subordinates. One reason you see CEOs asking multiple people the same question is that they are trying to triangulate the truth through a thicket of self-interested answers.
If You Ask The Wrong Questions...
Because we do not like feeling uncomfortable, our natural tendency is to seek out information that conforms to our existing beliefs and to ignore conflicting information.
How To Implement A Project With Lackluster Management Support (Newsletter 023)
Telling a hapless manager that ensuring top management support is a critical success factor for their project is more than unhelpful. It's a bit like saying, "OK, first ensure a perpetual source of cheap, clean, renewable energy...."
040 - On Composure - Moral Letters for Modern Times
Just as the glib speaker fools the lazy listener, so we mistake fervor in argument for conviction, and conviction for correctness.
Hold Fast To Truth
Holding fast to truth is not an easy path, but it is the least difficult of all other alternatives.
This is a tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1974 essay "Live Not By Lies"*
How Will You Be Remembered? (Newsletter 017)
If you would not be judged by your worst moment, do not be quick to judge others for theirs.
032 - On Continuous Improvement - Moral Letters for Modern Times
The steady progress we make by never stopping is a gift that compounds. Step by step, you pull away, and the crowd can never catch you.
These Things May Be Hurting Your Career
As a public service, I offer this list for you to check whether you may be doing things that are inadvertently hurting your career.
031 - On The Value Of Work - Moral Letters for Modern Times
The true value of work is when it brings you not possessions, but self-possession, and knowledge of what is worth pursuing and what can be safely cast aside.
