Christmas 2018

A very short and simple message before the holidays. As a treat, here are links to the holiday episode of Cal Fussman’s podcast (podcast, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher). It involves a grey piano, George Gershwin, a song you all know (and likely love) and quite simply a good story. The whole thing is a little heart warmer well worth listening to (and nothing much – or everything, depending on how you want to see it – to do with lawyers and lawyering). If you have little time, skip to 10:57 and listen up to 20:40. I wish you all great holidays, hopefully some quiet time

Read More »

A gem on leadership in high-stakes environments

Here (Stitcher; iTunes) are links to an episode of Brian Koppelman’s podcast I just listened to for the second time. Koppelman was (among other successes) a co-writer of Ocean’s Thirteen and is one of the heads behind the super-successful series „Billions“.  For this episode he had on General Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal is a retired general of the US-Army, in the late 70s commanded a unit of the US Special Forces (more commonly know as Green Berets), later headed JSOC (the umbrella command for all US special operations forces) and ISAF (Afghanistan). He’s not uncontroversial and his career actually ended largely due to this feature in the Rolling Stone suggesting a less-than-perfect

Read More »

Long cuts

It’s tempting to go look for the shortcut.  Fact of the matter is, there rarely is one, particularly when it comes to things that matter. What if we right here and now decide not to care about shortcuts? To not even ask? And do the work instead?

Read More »

Intentions and complaints

Complaining about lack of service on a Ryanair flight won’t get us anywhere. Michael O’Leary has made it abundantly clear that Ryanair is not in the service business, but in the nothing-counts-but-cheap business. So yes, service by Ryanair is practically nonexistent. And they wouldn’t have it any other way. Where else are we complaining based on a total failure to understand the intentions underlying whatever or whoever we complain about?

Read More »

Good days, not so good days

On days of the one kind I determine which steps I will need to take to go in the direction I have in mind. Solid plans, good ideas, diligent planning.  On days of the other kind I take a fractional step, sometimes a little more.  Go figure which are which.

Read More »