Finding Clarity in an Ambiguous World
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Remembering Who We Were
A couple weeks ago, I attended my high school reunion and saw several friends I haven’t seen for many years. One of them is now a mother of four and a missionary in China. Almost immediately after exchanging initial greetings she said, “Back in High School, we got in an argument and you said that…
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The Risks and Rewards of Coaching
Anyone who has had a good coach recognizes their value. From outside the relationship, it can be hard to see why. Our coaches usually don’t look like they could do what they are asking us to do, usually they can’t. Their skill set differs from our skill set — we can do but they can…
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The Hail Mary Failure
Our team is down by 5 points, they are on the 40 yard line, 3 seconds left to play. Hike! Everyone scrambles for the endzone and the quarterback throws a high arching spiral that seems to hang in the air as the end of game whistle blows. It falls down into a mass of players,…
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The Y2K Fallacy
The end of the world as we know it. This is how the Y2k bug was billed. Famous computer scientists staked their reputation on the gravity of the problem. Mobilize we did, dusting off the old Cobol books and scouring our software for dates shortened to two digits instead of four. Companies spent billions of…
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Neverending Prognostications
Back in the 1990’s, Yahoo concluded that they understood where the market was going — they needed a curated index with a good portal. So they built one. During that time, Yahoo was offered to buy Google for $1M but turned them down because it’s not about search, it’s about portals. No one predicted Google…
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Survivorship Bias
There’s a probably apocryphal story of a man who wrote to a number of wealthy people telling him that if they paid him a dollar he would accurately predict the winner of an upcoming NFL game. If he was wrong, he would refund their money. He got over a hundred takers and he sent half…
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50 Percent Chance of Death by Blackhole
Sometime ago, the Jon Oliver for the Daily Show did an interview with a man who was protesting the creation of a particle accelerator. He argued this new accelerator was going to create a black hole that would destroy our entire planet. This shocking conclusion surprised most, so the interviewer asked the man: “What are the…
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The Miracle of Two Weeks
When will this be done? I don’t know yet. When will you know? I don’t know that either. Just guess how long it’s going to take. Um, two weeks? Ah, the magic estimate of two weeks. Just far enough out that maybe we could get it done by then, but not so far out, that…
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Afraid of the Dark
A few weeks ago, I went down into our basement when no one else was home. It was dark and I had this thought come to mind suddenly: “What if someone was living down here and I didn’t even know it?” Images of someone coming out of the darkness filled my mind and I felt…
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The Terminal Velocity Of Change – Organizational
[This blog builds on the previous one regarding the terminal velocity of change in our own lives] When I start working at a new company, there are many things that jump out as being great and a few things that jump out at as needing improvement. Typically, as I start to understand more of the…
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