Endeavorance
The point of our blog isn’t to show you how up to date we are with buzzwords and jargon. It isn’t to instruct you with how-to guides, tips, tricks, and hacks. It isn’t to encourage, endorse, or engage in conformity. The point of our blog is to provoke, to counter popular notions, to question the status quo, to prompt your imagination, and to challenge you to think and achieve more than you might otherwise. Whatever happens, it’s worth the endeavor.
Endeavorance
The point of our blog isn’t to show you how up to date we are with buzzwords and jargon. It isn’t to instruct you with how-to guides, tips, tricks, and hacks. It isn’t to encourage, endorse, or engage in conformity. The point of our blog is to provoke, to counter popular notions, to question the status quo, to prompt your imagination, and to challenge you to think and achieve more than you might otherwise. Whatever happens, it’s worth the endeavor.
For Adults Only
With the publication of my new book for adults all but imminent — For Adults Only: How to Act Like an Adult Around Adults (it's for adults) — I've decided to offer a few excerpts here to gin up interest and, ideally, multi-million-dollar sales. WARNING: THE FOLLOWING...
My Favorite Aphorisms
Among many other rewarding things, my working life has enabled me to acquire quite the compendium of handy axioms, many of which have become words to live (and work) by. As a public service, I share three of my favorites here: #1. Never believe anything until it's...
Welcome to Hell
I know what you're thinking: "This can't be Hell." I'm sorry. I know it's not what you expected. There's a bunch of stuff missing. There's no eternal conflagration. There are no devilish dudes with horned heads and menacing pitchforks. Beelzebub puts in an occasional...
The Figurative Jungle
I’ve added to my fledgling collection of books for children by authoring another one, entitled The One and Only Ben. It’s being illustrated by a multi-talented young woman, Shelley Shaw. The image above is the first illustration Shelley created for the book. In brief,...
i been peroccupied with dicks
Being in the communications racket may make me a little more sensitive to intelligibility than most. And I may have a slight hyper-percipience when it comes to perceptions of linguistic decorum. But there are some occasions on which you just can't help but wonder:...
Danger in Numbers
Shelley Lucas, a very astute professional acquaintance, published a sorely needed post the other day: "The Missing Link: What CMOs & CIOs Really Need To Be Doing Together". As Howard Cosell might have said, it contained a veritable plethora of quotable gems,...
LinkedOut
Since I'm nothing if not eternally optimistic, I admit to being a tad perplexed by the fact that, as a species, we remain almost impregnably naive about all matters related to electronic communications. After all, it's been at least 35 years since Al Gore invented the...
I Identify as Confused
White is the new black. I don't know yet if black is (or can be) the new white. (All things considered, why would black people want to be white anyway?) But I do know that seriousness — like empiricism — is a dying art. I wonder: Are we grateful that we have the time...
Frederick Exley: 1929-1992
For those who don't know his work, Frederick Exley's passing 23 years ago today will be as the great preponderance of the world's myriad events — unknown, unseen, unremarked. For those of us who know and love his work, his passing marked the loss of trusted eyes; of a...
Hyperbole: It’s What’s For Dinner
I don't know Jim Durbin. But I like him already. Anyone who would write this clearly, directly, and truthfully is a man after my own heart: Cut the crap. Learn to be honest and write honestly. Talk about steady work, opportunity for advancement, well-run workplaces,...
I Can See Clearly Now
When my sons were younger, I'd take them to a pediatric ophthalmologist, Dr. Mitchell, for their periodic eye exams. During one such visit, somewhere around the time of my 40th birthday, Dr. Mitchell handed me an article about the perils of radial keratotomy. Noticing...
Finally: An End to Poverty
That whooshing sound you just heard was the biggest sigh of relief I've ever let out, spontaneously emitted after reading this: "State of Global Development: Why 2015 is a Pivotal Year for Ending Poverty": The outcomes of this year will help determine whether the...
Trade Show Trade-Offs
The other day I saw a photograph of a Chief Sales & Marketing Officer manning a booth at a trade show. At first, it didn't make much of an impression, one way or the other. But the more I thought about it, the more curious it made me. Presuming the dude in the...
Hammers and Zoogers
I thank two people for inspiring this post — Nate Fakes, proprietor of Nate Fakes Cartoons; creator of the nationally syndicated comic strip, Break of Day (whence the image above derives); the illustrator of Thought Leadership, our popular, monthly comic strip; and...
The Medium is the (Errant) Message
If Marshall McLuhan was correct in his assertion that the medium is the message (I believe he was), then this article from Britain's Marketing, is much ado about nothing: According to some industry people, there is a resemblance between Coke's ad, created by Ogilvy...
Crazy for Gluten
As readers of Chautauqua know, I've been acquiring a heightened awareness of gluten sensitivity. Linked to disorders as disparate and seemingly unrelated as Bonkus of the Konkus and chronic valetudinarianism, gluten also can be traced to innumerable behavioral...
We’re Not Giving Back Anything
I saw a post the other day the very title of which froze me in my proverbial tracks. The title was this — "It's Simple: Giving Back Must Be a Part of Doing Business" — and it's rubbish. Start here: The more profitable we are as a company, the more we are able to give...
Trust Me On This One
I saw an update on LinkedIn the other day from a woman who described herself as a serial entrepreneur. I don't know the woman. I have no earthly reason to doubt her. But her self-description caused me pangs of skepticism nevertheless. A professor of English with whom...
Good News: We’re Not Dead Yet
Take heart, people (or persons). We may be on the way out, but we're not quite dead yet. How do I know? A little birdie told me. But it didn't need to. The idea of eschewing personal relationships in favor of compiling more data, the mechanized dehumanization of...
Attorn For the Better
Thanks to a client, with whom I was working through the terms of a new agreement (amicably, or so I thought), I learned a new word the other day. It presented itself in a sentence of otherwise unremarkable, albeit characteristically tortured (syntactically speaking)...
From the Mailbag: Volume Two
The publishing of our first installment of the Mailbag generated even more cards and letters, many of which seemed preoccupied with personal brands. So, with our work cut out for us, we dive once more unto the breach. Dear Mailbag, I have a recurring dream. In it, I...
What a Kroc
In a recent post, I posited the notion that disruption is the new change. As if on cue, two articles appeared in my sundry feeds almost immediately thereafter: "Big Food's Big Problem: Consumers Don't Trust Brands" and "The McDonald's Brand: Contrived and Confused"....
We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
At risk of having you think I doth protest too much, I'm not prudish, at least as far as language is concerned. Truth be told, my language is, on occasion, salty enough to float rocks. But I, nevertheless, do try to maintain a modicum of linguistic decorum in...
Microfiber Essentials
Okay. We live in a world of specialization. I got that. But who'd have imagined we'd require specialized means of cleaning microfibers? If you even have to ask that question, it's the rough equivalent of wanting to know how much it costs to maintain a Mercedes: If you...
Disruption is the New Change
We've expressed our concern for the brain trust at HBR in previous posts. That concern is in no way ameliorated by a missive that floated through our consciousness last week. In a tract of some 1,016 words — "Let's Stop Arguing About Whether Disruption is Good or Bad"...
Mission (Statement): Impossible
One of my favorite recreational activities is to surf the web for mission statements. (I lead a very sheltered existence.) I find mission statements to be some of the most stunning examples of inexplicable gibberish imaginable. And I love to try to put myself in the...
Big Words Don’t Equal Big Ideas
I had a meeting with a prospect last week. He was eager to brand and launch his start-up. And he was excited for the opportunity to discuss its positioning and promotion. He was so enthusiastic when we spoke on the phone that I was as fired up as he was on my way to...
Sometimes a Page is Just a Page
Here's a partial list of the things most companies say they want on the pages of their websites: Sizzle. Fashion Shows. Popularity contests. Pizzazz. Things that make the boss happy. The kitchen sink and all the attendant plumbing. Cool stuff. And here's Today's Pop...
Stacking the (PowerPoint) Deck
Let's presume you give your sales people some rudimentary orientation. Let's presume that, in lieu of formal sales training, you give them some fundamental introduction to your company, what it does, and (most important) why it does what it does. And let's presume you...
The One and Only
In the summer of 1971, I was 17 years old. My friend, Bruce, and I went to see B.B. King at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford, Connecticut. We may have been the only two white dudes in the place. We most certainly were the youngest. And we were in no way prepared to...
All Things to All People
One of our former clients was a software-development shop. It created core-processing systems for insurance companies. Its stock answer to the question, "Can you do that?" was: "Yes," followed quickly by the first of a series of invoices for license and maintenance...
The Zen of Mannix
Don't you hate it when you wake up with the theme from Mannix stuck in your head? I used to. It was awful to find myself humming it while I made breakfast. It was frustrating to find myself singing the melody out loud in the shower (although, the acoustics are really...
Happy Trails
A long time ago in a land far away, a man — we'll call him Nimrod — founded a company. He knew everything about founding a company. But he knew nothing about promoting one. He knew nothing about assimilating people and letting them embody a brand in their own ways....
Five Things You Must Do To Survive
I was reading an article the other day about more effective blogging. One of its suggestions was to publish lists. As you know, I'm not a fan of lists. But I'm nothing if not open-minded. So, I resolved to give it a shot. Here are the five things you must do every day...
You Already Know
Because I'm an almost universally recognized, globally renowned, and highly sought expert in my field; because I'm a household name on most continents; and because I'm unfailingly modest, I'm perennially asked: "Dude. What do you consider to be the one, most important...
The Wonders of Technology
I read an article in Quartz that gave me pause: "People With Tattoos Report the Apple Watch is Having Trouble Determining They are Alive": A few early-adopter Apple Watch owners complained that they seemed to be having issues receiving notifications on their watches....
If You Ask For Help, Take It
I received an email from an earnest gentleman, eager to help his company write more business and make its brand more prominent. He presented a list of tactics he believed would be effective means to his ends. Here's the email (with minor modifications to protect the...
The Talking Dog
I'd expressed my disdain for experts in these pages before. Well, okay. More than once. All right already. More than twice. Nevertheless, a colleague shared this LinkedIn post with me and made the cardinal mistake of asking my opinion. Is it me, or have we reached new...
Gray Social
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true. (Demosthenes) We've written about the seemingly declining substance of the content in Harvard Business Review (HBR) before. We've also written about the perilous,...
The Threads of Life*
Since I mentioned the summer of 1964 in a previous post, I offer this one about a more recent encounter prompted by my having read the news item below: WESTBROOK, CONN – The Westbrook Fire Marshall is trying to determine the cause of an early morning fire at 20 Cherry...
From the Mailbag: Volume One
Since we've now published 150 posts — and since they generate a veritable avalanche of cards and letters from our legions of readers — we're going to share some of them on occasion ... because we want to. We tried to think of another reason, but we couldn't. Here we...
Collected Thoughts
I don't know if I'm your garden-variety hoarder. But I do tend to be a rather indiscriminate and prolific accumulator of thoughts. And I like to hang onto them until two or more present common threads in some form or fashion. In this instance, three of them connected...
Burning Bridges
Here's one of the most commonly dispensed, least-examined admonitions I can think of: "Don't burn your bridges." Provided you exercise at least a modicum of discernment and discrimination, why not? To establish the point, I offer this brief, illustrative,...
Us and Them
There's a difference between melting and dissolution, as witnessed in the contrast between America's former glory as the world's Melting Pot — and today's inglorious reality of cultural conflict, class friction, and political palaver about social justice, fairness,...
The Short End
A recent article reminds us what an unimaginably unfair place the world is — "A global wine shortage could soon be upon us" — its message of dread and foreboding including this catastrophic information: Last year, global supply for wine already barely exceeded demand....
Bob’s Your Uncle
idiom: noun — an expression, the meaning of which is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements My recent post about malaprops had me thinking about idiomatic expressions. One, in particular, has stuck with me because of its pertinence to the...
That Hacks Me Off
Am I the only one who's starting to question the editorial decision-making at Inc.? I'm quite sure they're lovely people. But you have to wonder when you find things like "The 1 Work Hack That Will Save You 900 Hours a Year": During every call or meeting, no matter...
Magic, Magic
The image above has been making the rounds in various web media for a while — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, et al. In the interest of giving proper credit for the image, I searched for attribution for its creator and could find none. Nevertheless, I use it here to...