New Year’s is a good time to think about change. As I think back on all the biggest opportunities and shifts I have made in my career, they all have these things in common: I was feeling stuck and bored. Something was tickling the back of my imagination. I moved toward it. And eventually, I…
I write every weekday. Christmas day is no exception. Today’s story is what happened to me on Christmas morning in New England, which didn’t quite turn out as expected. I was raised in a Jewish family and married a woman from a Christian family; as we have celebrated both traditions I’ve learned to love the…
Today’s my 59th birthday. I can see 60 on the horizon. If my most recent milestones birthdays are any guide, the trepidation that comes now will turns to mellowness when I get there. So I’m going to write about age now, while I’m still trepidating. In my head, I am still about 24. I still…
Twenty years as an analyst warped my sense of time. Instead of living in the moment — I foraged, looking back, around, and forward for evidence and opportunity. To the analyst or futurist . . . The past is research fodder The analyst is constantly gathering fuel for arguments. The best fuel is lying around…
Here are a few words on what it feels to successfully create art, and why we can never really understand it. This weekend I attended “The Fabrication of Imagination,” a show put on by the Arts League of Lowell, Massachusetts. The people there were fascinating. I met Judith Wombwell, an artist originally trained as a choreographer…
Thanks to adventurous parents, 35 years of work, and 58 years on the planet, I’ve been around. Indulge me a bit as I describe the most amazing things that happened to me in every state I’ve visited (45 plus DC). Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming I was 5 and my…
I was 15 years old in August of 1974, traveling in Germany with my family, when President Nixon resigned. It made a powerful impression on me. I think, because of our shared history of that time, we all feel we understand what might be coming for Trump. But we don’t. My father had gotten a summer…
I spent 20 years as an analyst at Forrester Research. Now I sell my insights to companies and prospective authors as a consultant. While analysts and consultants have a lot in common, their approaches are different. The analyst focuses on talking over listening This is based on my experience as an analyst, working with and competing…
I am a mansplainer. In the hopes of enlightening readers of all genders as they interact in the workplace, I’ll examine how I got that way, why I mansplained, and my path to reform. First off, let me explain my background, because it matters in this discussion. I was raised in a moderately affluent suburb of…