Why is our first reaction to reach for the lawyers? If you haven’t heard, the Apple / Google wars heat up.  Both of these companies are poised to become huge players in the emerging “super phone” market.  Which means that billions, if not trillions, of dollars are at stake.  This is why Apple’s lobbing of legal grenades is so important.  With filings targeted at Google’s phones (specifically the HTC models), Apple is saying they won’t take iPhone encroachment lightly. This isn’t new. Apple and Microsoft used to be at war.  ...

Volunteers are special people.  They agree to do a lot of work that you and I would only do if someone paid us.  They save organizations, time, money, benefits, energy and a host of other things.  Often they are our biggest supporters. Yet we don’t always treat them that way.  We can easily lose sight of what drives them, what motivates them.  This isn’t a condemnation of us.  We often have good intentions to work with volunteers, but we are busy too.  And sometimes volunteer things get pushed to the bottom… When this ...

Things have been a bit slow around here.  There have been good and bad reasons for that.  The good reasons are involving starting a new consulting project which is eating up a huge amount of my time, while also getting engaged.  To a girl, not a consulting project.  The bad news is that I have just been lazy (in some sense) about getting things updated on the site.  It’s not that I have stopped writing.  In fact I have a few month backup of content I’ve created.  It’s that I’ve been holding off on doing that until I upgraded the ...

I get excited all the time: During Steelers games (well maybe not this year).  When I get a new idea.  When I read a book.  When I think something cool's about to happen. If you talk to most people they will tell you excitement is a good thing.  We want our clients to be excited by our products.  We want our audiences to be excited by our words.  I want you to be excited about this blog. But sometimes excitement is the enemy.  Sometimes enthusiasm kills. How you ask?  Because when we get excited we can often lose our way.  We run blindly ...

The last year has been particularly hard on people.  The economy has been stagnant at best, and in a free fall at worst.  Now there's rumors of a recovery under way.  I don't know if that's true or not.  That's for economists to debate. But for the people directly impacted by the economy this has been a painful time.  Downsizing often brings health problems (headaches, physical illness, sleeping issues) and emotional problems (depression, anger, stress). Many people turn to alcohol and drugs ...

In the original post on the Myth of Stability I mentioned that people like, perhaps even need, stability.  It's how we predict what's going to happen to us in the future.  It's how we talk ourselves into falling asleep at night.  It's how we get up to face the next day.  Because lets face it, if you knew disaster was just around the bend, would you really feel like getting up? But I must concede, not everyone seems to like stability.  Take, for instance, ...

One of the things I do is teach Industrial – Organizational Psychology at Xavier University.  As I was preparing a lecture on employee training I was reminded of just how important it is to have motivated employees go through the training.  No matter how brilliantly you’ve designed a training program, no matter how engaging your speaker is, no matter how relevant your training program is to their jobs it won’t matter if the employee doesn’t want to learn. Nothing can overcome someone who is ...

The temptation in our work is to cater to the lowest common denominator*.  If you're an artist you want to make something that people "get."  If you're a communicator you want to develop a talk that people can "relate to."  If you're in a professional field you want to design a product that appeals to a "wide audience."  Or if you're a social worker you want a program that is "easy to understand." The problem is, this leads us to cater to the lowest common denominator.  We built programs, create art, and design communications for the people who are least ...

For many of us we consider our jobs simply a way to pay the bills and to keep a roof over our head.  But what if we saw them as something different?  What if we embraced the potential that a job could have?  What if we took a risk, and didn't live in fear? Over the years the meaning of work has changed.  In a highly agrarian society you simply had to farm.  You farmed or you starved.  You just didn't have much choice.  The Industrial Age moved people from the country to the cities, but most people became human cogs ...

Stability.  We all want it.  We want our days to be predictable and even a bit mundane. "Wait a second," you may be thinking, "I want excitement in my life.  I don't want it to be boring." Unless you're name is Evel Knievel, I doubt that very much.  Don't get me wrong, we love the illusion of danger and excitement - that's why roller coasters are so popular.  But we don't really want true danger.  If we did, why can't we walk outside without SPF 50 sunscreen?  Why are we worried about eating non-organic food? We want excitement as long ...