by Mark O'Brien | Jun 8, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Jun 5, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Jun 4, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Jun 3, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Jun 2, 2015
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)...
by Mark O'Brien | Jun 1, 2015
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...
