“There are one hundred people striking at the branch … to every one person that is striking at the root.” As an author, speaker, change management consultant, futurist and so-called “thought leader,” Thoreau’s quote has always resonated with me on a number of different levels. But what if it’s not true? What if it is something…

Advertising pioneer John Wanamaker once quipped, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” As a futurist, I’d like to put my own spin on this quotation and modify it by saying, “Half of the predictions I hear about the future are wrong; the trouble is I don’t know…

“How do you define wisdom,” asked the boy. “It is like harnessing the wind,” replied the old man. “What do mean?” “The wind can extinguish a candle or fuel a fire.” “So it’s all about applying things in the right dose,” said the boy. “Oh, it’s far more subtle that,” continued the old man. “It’s…

Elmore Leonard, the famous crime novelist, died yesterday. In 2001, he wrote an article on writing, Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle, offering ten tips on good writing. Rule #10 was my favorite: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Sounds simple, right? It isn’t. It actually requires…

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among…

What does it feel like to be wrong? The answer might surprise you. It feels like being right. As Kathryn Schulz explains in her wonderful book, Being Wrong, it’s similar to that moment when Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff but hasn’t yet realized it.

In honor of today being 11-11-11, I am making available the first 11 of my 39 “unlearning lessons” from my new book Higher Unlearning: 39 Post-Requisite Lessons for Achieving a Successful Future. Enjoy! Unlearning Lesson #1: Knowledge Can Kill–Unlearn or Die Unlearning Lesson #2: Don’t Climb the Highest Mountain Unlearning Lesson #3: Become Uncomfortable in Your…

I have been traveling a great deal lately and between trips to Newport, Rhode Island; St. John’s, Canada and Lake George, New York, I thought it would be more relaxing to stay at a Bed & Breakfast near the Green Mountains of Vermont instead of returning home to Minneapolis during my short break between speaking…

Have you ever had the experience of listening to a person mispronounce an uncommon word? It could be a city name, a medical term or even someone’s first or last name. Our default reaction is to dismiss the person because, clearly, they don’t know what they’re talking about. (If they did, they would have pronounced…