by Mark O'Brien | May 16, 2016
Trying to get through a recent post of nearly 4,000 words, which turned out to be an infomercial for an equally windy 124-page report from Deloitte, put me in mind of this passage from Alice’s Restaurant, since the post contains … … twenty seven...
by Mark O'Brien | Apr 7, 2016
The blind squirrel found an acorn. It was bound to happen. After stumbling around in an amaurotic crepuscule, falling out of a few trees, and living in a virtually opaque stupor, the scansorial rodent finally discovered what empiricists working with even modestly...
by Mark O'Brien | Mar 29, 2016
You had to know the trivialization of everything would find its way into business at some point. You had to anticipate superficiality, like water, would eventually seep into every nook, cranny, and formerly purposeful aspect of our lives. And so it has. In fact,...
by Mark O'Brien | Mar 21, 2016
When I took my first full-time job (in a major U.S. insurance and financial-services corporation), my boss said to me: “The quality of your work doesn’t make any difference. The only thing that matters is who you know.” It remains one of the most...
by Mark O'Brien | Mar 11, 2016
Attention brand managers: In case you haven’t yet gotten the memo, you now work for your social-media person. That’s right. According to the social-media person who authored this gem — “Branding isn’t dead, but it’s no longer in your...
by Mark O'Brien | Mar 4, 2016
Some syntactical constructions are a little harder to penetrate than others. The following snippet requires a hammer drill with a diamond bit to permeate, after which it could still stand some explication. The snippet comes from an article entitled, “Why The...
