In 1995 I decided to embrace optimism as a strategy for creating possibilities. It wasn’t a rational choice, it was an intuitive leap of faith. My many years of education as a physicist had taught me to ignore my intuition, but logic was insufficient to overcome my exuberance. You see I’d just had my eyes [...]

Originally published on ProjectConnections.com April 2011. Pardon me if I’m not my normally humorous self. I’m obsessing on disaster these days after the recent quake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant tragedies in Japan. While there have been plenty of tragedies in the past that could have consumed my emotional bandwidth (see the complete list on Wikipedia [...]

It’s easy to get stuck.  From time to time it happens to everyone.  One foot nailed to the floor, we go ’round and ’round – full speed ahead, but with no progress.  Eventually we wonder why the scenery looks hauntingly familiar.  If we’re lucky someone will throw a bucket of cold water in our face [...]

Thomas Friedman said The World is Flat, and I certainly feel that the business world is getting smaller.  Many companies today are looking overseas for new markets and new customers in order to sustain the profitable growth of their businesses.  New behaviors, skills and thinking are required to succeed globally, and companies must act strategically [...]

I’m healthy and I have proof!  Yes, indeedy, I have a cheerful yellow A4 size piece of paper from the Japanese government that testifies to the fact that I survived and passed a quarantine inspection.  That’s no small matter, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to surviving: 1) the hellish drive from my [...]

The current global crisis, which I’m calling the “worldwide economic mood disorder” (WEMD for short), hit right about the time I was feeling that I’d finally recovered from the dot-com bubble bust of 2001. Although that period of business convulsions did reach beyond the Silicon Valley, my neighborhood was definitely “ground zero”. My cushy job [...]

If you are genetically gifted with the ability to get results that other people claim are highly unlikely or darn near impossible, you don’t need to read this. But if you are faced with an insurmountable “To Do” list, here are twelve predictable (and avoidable) pitfalls that could stand between you and your goals. 1. [...]

What SEEMS impossible, but if it WERE possible, would transform your job, your team, your company, heck . . . YOUR LIFE . . . for the better?  That is the paradigm-shifting question that I learned many years ago from Joel Barker, a Futurist who made a movie called “The Business of Paradigms” a way [...]

Most of my work revolves around the power of creating breakthroughs through extreme optimism and hideously positive thinking for which “hyperbole” simply isn’t a big enough word. I frequently rant and rave about the hazards of know-it-alls who poo-poo every idea and wield their negativity like a scythe, cutting down anything new or imaginative in [...]

This morning started off just about like any other day – dreams of transforming the planet, concerns about my own inadequacies in that department, and thinking about what I might have for breakfast.  But soon my day took a turn for the more unusual . . .  I had quite a scare this morning as [...]