I miss surprises. I really do. I feel a little bit sorry and a little bit nostalgic about the fact that things are becoming so increasingly obvious that it gets harder and harder to imagine — forget about trying to actually find — things that aren't completely...

It finally happened: In a recent Discovery Session with a new client, the client said, “We need you to create new presentation materials for us. But we don’t want you to use PowerPoint.” I don’t know what unnerved the client more — the fact that I wept openly or that,...

In the town in which we live — South Windsor, Connecticut — mosquitoes tested positive last week for Eastern Equine Encephalitis, otherwise know as Triple E or EEE. This is timely but not accidental, of course, coming as it does after Connecticut’s deleriously...

Sometimes, the most idle reading yields the most alarming discoveries. Case in point: Since I like to stay current with what’s up Down Under, I was perusing the online edition of The Sydney Morning Herald (the abbreviation of which is SMH for all you fans of irony),...

Okay. Come on. Admit it: You were on the verge of losing faith in Harvard Business Review (HBR), weren’t you? You just didn’t think, after all the blatantly obvious and trivial inanities it’s published, it could continue to maintain its stride, right?  O, ye of little...

We came across a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article from March 7, 2016, entitled, "Actually, You Should Check Email First Thing in the Morning”. Since we like to check our email first thing in the morning, we were heartened when we read this: My new research-based...

This article — "The Case For The Chief (Employee) Experience Officer” — was written by a young man. You can tell it was written by a young man because he believes the way to remedy the stultifying, aliening effects of bureaucracy is to create more...

GRADUATION & NEW LIFE Commencement  JoAnna Bennett, O'Brien Communications Group 27 June 2019 This past Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure of attending a high school commencement ceremony. More than 500 young adults were beginning a distinctly new chapter of...

We came across a post the other day — The 25 Most Absurd Job Titles In Tech — that dismayed and disappointed us. (We’ll leave it up to you, dear readers, to inflict that post upon yourselves.) As cynical as we are, we still hold out ever-diminishing quotients of hope...

I love the Internet because it's an endless source of mindless distraction. It's also a wonderful way to discover the mindless things with which other people distract themselves. One of my more recent discoveries is ASMR or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. I came...

While surfing LinkedIn the other day, I noticed an article about organizational transformation. (Good luck with that.) The profile of the author indicated he was responsible for innovation. The first thing that crossed my mind was that being responsible for innovation...

If you don't believe in God — or if you harbor any doubts whatsoever that he loves us — doubt no more: "The Saddest Leafy Green: America never really liked kale": Since about 2011, when Gwyneth Paltrow taught the world how to make kale chips on the Ellen show, kale...

While reading the news feed on my iPhone in the gym the other night, even as I cranked my heart rate up to 340 on a Matrix elliptical machine, I came across a headline that damn-near blew me off the machine: “This 74-year-old woman just gave birth to twins.” The piece...

Readers of George Orwell’s 1984 typically imagine Big Brother to be a rather ominous looking character — dark, menacing, clearly threatening, though he neither raises a fist nor carries a weapon. (Can someone please remind me, again, why 1984 isn’t required reading?)...

STRESS & MINDSETFearJoAnna Bennett, O'Brien Communications Group15 August 2019  While watching the movie, Croods, with my children this past weekend, I couldn’t get a quote from the introduction out of my head. While one of the main characters is describing...

As a result of existential, ontological, teleological, and epistemological phenomena I can no longer ignore, I’m creating a new philosophy. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’m founding a new school of philosophical thought and action. It’ll be called, familiarly,...

Oh, no. Here we go again. If there’s a bandwagon anywhere in the vicinity, you can be sure Homer Business Review (HBR) will be jumping on it. And if that bandwagon has anything to with the plugging, promoting, or propagating of bureaucracy, you know HBR will be among...

STORIES & INDEPENDENCE  What’s More Important: The Story or the Facts? JoAnna Bennett, O'Brien Communications Group 3 July 2019 Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, otherwise known as Independence Day. It’s the day on which our forefathers declared our independence...

As many people know (especially my wife), I hate it when I’m right. Case in point:In 2015, I wrote a post called, “Highways of Algorithmic Morality”. It was about an ostensible study conducted by three sociopathic nitwits from the Toulouse School of Economics in...

The definition of a fable is, “a short story, typically with animals as characters, conveying a moral.” And fables are figments of the human imagination.

I happened on a story on Medium the other day entitled, with disarming effusiveness, "Blue Lagoon Strategy — Carve your own niche!" Since I'm something of an amateur whittler, I thought I might be able to pick up a few tips on carving techniques, the best types of...

If you have any doubts at all that insurtech is The New Thing, The Next Big Thing, The Already Big Thing, and The Ultimate Bomb-Diggity, look no further than this post from Finextra, pubished just this past May: "Report questions value of insurtech despite record...

Author’s Note: Every word of this story is true. No morons were hurt in the making of the story told here, except yours truly. I’m all right now. Thank you. I once had a client (who shall remain nameless), whose wife (who also shall remain nameless) worked in the...

Most people think the biggest fears in life are of dying or of public speaking. I’ve never been able to equate the two. But maybe that’s because I’ve never been asked to give a speech to an audience of armed snipers. Besides, I’ve pretty well resigned myself to the...

PREGNANCY, MOTHERHOOD & WORKPLACEDefine Your RichesJoAnna Bennett, O'Brien Communications Group22 August 2019A headline on LinkedIn recently caught my eye: “Is pregnancy an obstacle at work?” The headline glared at me from the right side of my news feed. I’ve...

I’m a guy who believes in the evolution of consciousness. The paper pills in the pocket of Dr. Reefy in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1920, for example, were a literary device created to suggest the lunacy of Dr. Reefy. Just 48 years later,...

Please take a look at this infographic. If it disgusts and horrifies you as much as it does me (it should) — and if you’re up for a little perspective — take a look at this, this, and this.  That infographic is disgusting because it shows the extent to which some...

After our last mailbag, the deluge of correspondence we received filled all 314 floors of our building, from the the cheap linoleum tiles underfoot to the cheap acoustic tiles overhead. Our ability to respond to all those letters was hindered by the Fire Marshall, who...

I love thinking about the notion of saving humanity – as if we’re anywhere close to extinction, even though we seem to destroy everything around us and are, collectively, incredibly invasive.

I recently read a LinkedIn post written by a gentleman named Joel Stevenson. The post was correct, thought-provoking, and sobering for those of us in the marketing profession who don’t want to be painted with particularly pernicious brushes. The brush in Joel’s...