An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook: False news is out of hand. People read lies and obliviously share them on Facebook. You can solve this problem. Not only that, you can solve it in a scalable way, without censoring anything and without changing your main sharing algorithm. Let’s see how….
I recently got access to the secret playbook Donald Trump uses to generate a new, ever more outrageous policy every eight or nine days. I’ve used it to predict the next six weeks of Trump news stories: International loser database. “As soon as I get in office, the State Department will begin tracking losers in every governments on earth,”…
If you want a great book launch, your focus after completing the manuscript should be on promotion and relationships. Great books sell, but they don’t sell themselves. The traditional publishing process has three stages. In the first stage, you create a proposal and pitch the book to publishers. In the second stage, you complete your research and…
Last night’s CNN Debate was about how the Republican candidates are “tougher” than Democrats. But look close. Tougher always means violating somebody’s rights, including yours. While the debate moderators asked about the mass collection of phone records, they glossed right over the implicit privacy violations in many of the candidates’ proposal. Only one candidate — Rand…
People see patterns, but sometimes they are coincidences. To analyze numbers in a meaningful way, you must be disciplined both in how you collect them and how you connect them. Otherwise, you’re just doing numerology. Take Charles Arthur’s article in The Guardian called “90:9:1 – the odd ratio that technology keeps creating.” The intelligent reader asks…
Too much of what I read, masquerading as analysis, is just polemics. That’s a shame, because polemics generates more heat than light. Basically, there are two ways of arguing. When you argue polemically, you start with a position. For example, you may start with the idea that social media marketing is effective, or that gun…
Ask yourself, and be honest: do you hate Donald Trump as much as he seems to hate Muslims? The effects of hate, fear, and generalizations about your fellow humans are pernicious. They corrode your soul. You end up looking in the mirror and wondering if you are any better than the thing you hate. For…
Chipotle Mexican Grill’s CEO Steve Ells is “deeply sorry” after 141 of his customers in Boston College contracted Norovirus. This comes in the wake of virus outbreaks in nine other states over the past year. The restaurant chain has deployed a team of copywriters to solve the problem. Their efforts on the company’s website gave me a stomachache….
It’s just no fun if you’re the only one in your organization dedicated to clear, bold communication. Don’t stop there, spread the word. Here’s how to do it effectively. If your company, department, or workgroup doesn’t put a premium on clarity, it’s your job to change it. Remember the Iron Imperative: The Iron Imperative: You…