The Power of Company Culture This is a great article on how the founder/CEO of Zappos.com learned how important it is for companies to focus on culture and choosing the right employees for their company. If you have time, the very first question and answer is my favorite, so be sure and read that one if you can. Tony Hsieh is the chief executive of Zappos.com, and this interview was conducted by Adam Bryant. Below...
Insights from The New Yorker Profile John Mackey, the co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods Market The New Yorker has a long article on Mackey which was a very good read. Since it is so long, I've summarized what I found interesting from it below. I'm terrible at summarizing and in college never got into highlighting my textbooks. When reading I either found it all really interesting or all really dull, so it was...
Think Different Fostering Innovation in Your Organization Apple's iconic "Think Different" campaign from 1997 Apple had a famous ad campaign in 1997 asking people to "think different". How many of you think different? If you find you or your company struggles to think differently, I just reviewed a great list of 50 ways to foster innovation and here are my favorite from the ideachampions.com article: Remember that innovation requires no fixed rules or templates --...
We went to Deacon Dave's Christmas Lights last night in Livermore which was amazing! In total this year he has 325,530 lights and I have never seen a residence decorate for Christmas to this extent. What is Casa del Pomba? Portuguese for "House of the Dove", this is the private residence of Deacon Dave Rezendes. On December 4th, 1982, Deacon Dave was ordained a Roman Catholic deacon. When he was ordained, he dedicated his home...
How an ancient Siamese royal tradition evolved into a modern metaphor for unwanted gifts A white elephant: once a royal gift that came with an impossible burden A "White Elephant" dates back to the ancient kings of Siam, who wanted to punish courtiers without actually appearing to do so. Their ploy was to give the offender a rare albino elephant, knowing that it was an offer which dare not be refused. The poor man was...
We went to San Francisco yesterday and started things off right by going to Taylor's which has awesome burgers and sweet potato fries. We surprised our birthday boy at the Motown Madness musical. Motown isn't my favorite music in the world, but I mentioned before going in that as long as I'm not the one singing, I'm sure I'll enjoy it. Little did I know, almost halfway through the musical, they would pull me up...