There was a woman I knew in graduate school who could read upside down. Which is a pretty useful skill for a labor negotiator, especially in the days when a lot of the people assumed that the young woman across the table from them was "just a girl." Needless to say,...
A colleague of mine is about to move offices. Or, more precisely, her company is about to move her office across town. This has prompted mass angst (not including her) about office space and what the new digs will look like. Which got me thinking about how stupidly...
I have a problem with long-term contracts. If you have to lure customers into sticking around, what does that say about your confidence in your product, service, and/or value? Okay, I get it. You spent a lot of effort bringing people in. And you want to incentivize...
Sports reporter Stephen A. Smith once commented that Golf Week's ill-conceived cover about Tiger Woods would never have happened had there been any diversity in the newsroom. (Of course, that still doesn't answer the "what were they thinking?" question.) I've always...
Some people don't deserve to run a business. A basic rule of business is that income has to exceed expenses. If it doesn't, then you have to figure out why (and determine how to tweak your model to be successful). Or maybe not. According to an article in the...
I discovered one of my old blog posts "published" on someone else's Web site. I sent the business an e-mail to remove my blog post immediately as they did not have permission to use it. Then I wrote in a Facebook exchange on the topic: I'm really just [mad] on...
Sporting events have become sensory overload zones. The NFL has cheerleaders. The NBA has cheerleaders too, and mascots who do wacky slam dunks. Major League Baseball has sausage throws (don't ask) and trivia questions and "walk up" songs. The last is the music each...
Do you like "Big Data"? McKinsey released an interesting report last year that does a good job of laying out the key ways data is being employed in a business environment. The report identifies five broad categories: Transparency Performance metrics Customer...
Is your business incentivizing employee collaboration? The NFL does not have guaranteed contracts. This means that you can negotiate your multi-year deal, but if your get injured, sneeze the wrong way, or otherwise lose your marketability, then you end up on the...
Wrapped in the Chick-fil-A controversy is a warning to small business owners. It's not about free speech (you can say whatever you want). Nor is it about the wisdom of a dose of self-censorship (just because you can say it doesn't mean you should). And I'm certainly...