You have boarded your flight home, musing through your tablet or book, waiting to take off. You noticed that the flight crew has finalized their check of the cabin, but you sit at the gate motionless. Three minutes, five minutes pass and you leave the gate and taxi down the runway before stopping. Five minutes,…Continue Reading “How imperfect information affects customers”
The next trend/buzzword is the emergence of bot/chatbot thanks to companies such as KiK, Facebook, and Slack. The popularity of bots is due to the need for brands to interact with the messaging channel, which has emerged due to the tendency of younger generations to spend most of their online interactions through this medium. What is a…Continue Reading “Bots are here to stay, but what are they?”
Are you in the mood for a self-help book that is amusing, hilarious, and has real takeaways to be used in everyday life? Then Works Well with Others is definitely worth checking out. Ross McCammon is an editor with Esquire and admits that he has a difficult time as an introvert. This book dishes out tips that he has learned from his career meeting high profile individuals and feeling like he is an imposter.
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Persuasion is a hot topic in the business and personal world currently as everyone wants to bend others to their will. Influencer does not focus on persuasion, but on how to drive change on a project through six different sources of influence.
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The Kaizen Way
Toyota was known in the 80’s for its continuous improvement methods and the empowerment of employees to identify deficits and provide suggestions. Although Deming and the US manufacturing complex during the 40’s for support of WWII invented continuous improvement we soon forgot after the war. One small step is the thought behind Kaizen and Maurer applies continuous improvement to solving our own life problems.
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And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants
Economics came into the mainstream with the advent of Freakonomics where the field became a celebrity in its own right. When to Rob a Bank continues the work Levitt and Dubner did with Freakonomics and highlights curated works from their blog.
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The Checklist Manifesto poses an interesting concept on using checklists to standardize tasks across multiple verticals. The author is a general surgeon focusing mainly on healthcare applications. The carrying premise is that a checklist in the OR can prevent common complications due to complex tasks such as surgery.
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Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
If you have followed entrepreneurship or venture capital for any time over the past decade then you are familiar with how unique Andreessen Horowitz is in their investing style. A VC that places more focus on the ‘X-factor’ than financials or models that are wrong 1 month into the 36 month projection. What I did not know is the journey Ben Horowitz – the rap quoting blogger – made to reach the top, The Hard Thing About Hard Things chronicles his story and then provides advice.
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A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
Your project is over budget and overdue, your business sponsor is growing impatient, and IT departments are blaming each other. Worse yet, you have just been promoted and have been given 90 days or the organization fails. Does this sound familiar? While many organizations do not face this extreme situation, The Phoenix Project guides us through the adventures of Bill as he learns about DevOps and Lean principles. If you ever read The Goal, then the story may sound familiar.
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I have always been a fan of 37Signals’ (now Basecamp) products, whether it is Basecamp or the now infamous Ruby on Rails platform. When I found out that Jason Fried released a book based on his approach, I had to check out Rework.
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