Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting keynotes for 24Q4-25Q1
Every year, I create three main presentation decks. For 2024, they are:
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do: How to turn uncertainty into a competitive advantage. (Based on my new book by the same name.)
Regression Toward the Meme: Why modern leadership falls into old traps - and how to avoid them.
The Efficiency Illusion: How to uncover the hidden costs of digital commerce and create profitable growth.
If you want to book me for your event, corporate speaking slot, or workshop, merely send me an email. To make sure I am available, please do so at your earliest convenience; my availability is limited and the schedule is filling up fast. More information may be found here.
A couple of updates before we go-go
One has to admire the chutzpa of Mercedes mechanics. First you have to wait two weeks to get the car checked (read: hooked up to a computer that tells you what is wrong in a matter of seconds), then another three weeks before they have time to actually fix the issue. Life is good when demand is too.
Being without a car is not too bad; I could get a rental on the insurance, but since the kindergarten is a five minute walk and I work from home anyway, I can make do.
Well, most of the time. Occasionally, I have to go grocery shopping, but my father-in-law has been happy to lend me his car. Very kind of him. Unfortunately, he has also been happy to tag along (since “he was going anyway”) and although he means well, I cannot lie: if I do not get my own car back soon, I am going to have to shoot myself.
On a more professional note, a recent MIT study showed that “companies are looking for employees with an innate hunger to learn more and raise their game rather than rest on past successes”. Beyond being blindly obvious (and slightly ironic given that it is more likely that executives and managers do), the implications for leaders in consultancies and agencies are often ignored. As I keep telling them, it is not enough to recruit or merely encourage; one has to actively enable learning as well. In turn, this means that one has to reconsider utility rates. After all, if there is no time to learn, no amount of innate hunger will help.
Few, of course, are willing to do that. It is much easier to put the entire responsibility on their already overworked employees.
Moving on.