Sustainable or endurable?

What does it mean to have a sustainable business? I don’t mean sustainable in the environmental sense. I certainly support environmental sustainability, but I’m thinking about something closer to home, closer to our day-to-day experience of being in business. Personally sustainable. A business that gives us the time and space we need to enjoy our work and also our friends, …

The perils of “how”

Everyone does it. (No, not that. Let’s have a little decorum here, please.) In over 25 years in corporate America, working on  systems analysis, business analysis, and system design, I never saw anyone not do it. And in all my years of self-employment since, I continue to see people doing it. Clients, colleagues, friends … and even myself, every now and then, …

Is using jargon really all that bad?

Jargon is everywhere.  We all use it. In and of itself, jargon isn’t necessarily bad.  But it can go horribly wrong.  We’ve all seen websites that read as if they were assembled from a grab-bag of catch-phrases, clichés, and other jargon-y expressions.  And I’d be willing to bet that we’ve all experienced moments where we felt safer hiding behind jargon instead of putting our …

How to use symbols to create clarity and understanding

“Do you really believe in that sort of thing?”  my friend asked, looking at me with an odd expression. I’d just told her about a gift I’d bought for myself:  a tarot reading by someone who consistently gets rave reviews from people whose opinions I trust and value.  And I could tell she was trying not to offend me with her opinion of …

Is it hard, or is it scary?

It seems like every article and marketing email coming into my in-box these days is playing some variant of the “it’s so hard” song. Whether they’re harping on how hard it is to do some specific thing, or how hard it is to focus on doing anything at all, it seems like “it’s hard” is the current Hot Marketing Trend. I don’t buy …

Don’t accept your labels – especially if you like them

Labels are tricky things. You can learn a lot about yourself from labels. Personality styles, for instance – everything from Myers-Briggs to the Enneagram and a host of others – can provide powerful insights into why you do things the way you do, what you might enjoy and excel at, and even into what’s most important for you. Personal attributes are …

Sandwiches or salad? Goals matter!

At a party earlier this week, the hostess handed me a cutting board, knife, and a half-dozen tomatoes to be sliced.  “What,” I asked, “is the goal?” She laughed at me. “Sandwiches!” I asked for a good reason, no matter how funny it might have sounded.  If she’d said, “Salad!” I would have cut the tomatoes in different shapes than I …

What does it take?

Driving home this afternoon from having lunch with two of my favorite colleagues and friends, I was thinking … what does it take to be successful? We’d talked about this at lunch – not directly, but indirectly in the things we said about our own businesses and about the people we meet at different types of networking events. What does …

Your Mom Was Right (and why that’s relevant)

There are things almost every mother ends up saying to her children.  We recognize these pieces of advice and instruction as amusing mom-cliches simply because they’re used so routinely.  And like most cliches, these bits of motherhood wisdom hold a certain kernel of truth. I noticed recently that many of them also apply to running a business. So whether or …

The potential cost of poor communication

I got an email from American Express on Thursday.  Seems my account had been compromised and there were fraudulent charges on my card. Theft, in other words. But this isn’t a story about theft, or even about my overwhelming curiosity about how in the world did they know those charges aren’t mine?  (Kind of creepy, really, even though it’s nice that they do know.) In …