Year: 2018
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Post Of The Month – August 2018 – Nominations
It's time again to open nominations for Post of the Month, so do nominate your good reads via the comments below or direct and I'll put the shortlist up for a vote as soon as I have a good number. As always, I have a few starters listed below but do add to these. My…
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How the Music Industry Became its Own Worst Enemy
This episode of the Hit Parade podcast from Slate is a wonderfully geeky look at how the record industry tried to kill retail sales of the single in the 90s in favour of the more lucrative album format, but it’s also a salutary lesson for businesses of all types. The album had of-course been the…
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Unknown Unknowns
Noah Brier has a great analysis of the true origins of the 'Unknown unknowns' framework which looks something like this: Despite being brought to wide attention by Donald Rumsfeld's remarks about Iraq, the concept has origins that seemingly stretch further back and derive from a military procurement context. The framework is a useful way of categorising risk…
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The Angel in The Marble
'Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.' Michelangelo I happened across this Michelangelo quote via this Hidden Brain podcast on the subject of marriage, and I rather liked…
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Blitzscaling
I wrote something about scale over on the agile business blog. About how in order to scale sometimes you need to do things that don't scale, and how difficult this can be in an organisation that is used to only thinking in terms of top-down, big projects, large spend, significant near-term return. The ability to…
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On Creating a Purpose-Driven Organisation
I've been driving back and forth to Kent over the past week (long story) so my podcast consumption has dramatically increased. This HBR Ideacast on creating a purpose driven organisation was fascinating (there's an article here on the same theme but the podcast is better) and it contained a few nuggets that I want to cut…
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The Buxton Index, and the Rhythm of Business
'The Buxton Index of an entity, i.e. person or organization, is defined as the length of the period, measured in years, over which the entity makes its plans.' I came across the 'Buxton Index' via this Shane Parrish podcast with Patrick Collison founder of Stripe (which is really worth a listen). Seemingly originated by Professor John Buxton at…
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Post of the Month – July 2018 – The Winner
Well it was a stellar list to choose from this month, and a close run vote but in the end it was Ian Leslie's excellent The Death of Don Draper that just about won it. So well done Ian. You join the hall of fame. My thanks to everyone that took part and look out…
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Post of the Month – July 2018 – The Vote
Thanks for the nominations. BBH Labs' World Cup of Books has been nominated and although it's slightly beyond the norm I've included it as it was a good celebration of great writing and rather fun, and I've also included a great talk from Paul Adams which is not strictly a post, but hey. So our…