
Visiting the birthplace of our civilization and political system on our day trip to Athens…
Visiting the birthplace of our civilization and political system on our day trip to Athens…
Incredible vacation on Zakynthos, a tiny Greek island in the Ionian Sea! The most dramatic cliffs, hundreds-of-years-old olive trees, and the bluest water I’ve ever seen…
By Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press)
In this scathing indictment of recent trends in parenting, education, politics, and the media, a First Amendment expert and a social psychologist take on three “great untruths”–what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people–that contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and that result in a culture of safetyism which interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development.
This excellent analysis of how “good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure” is a must-read for young parents, educators, and anyone else interested in the future of our democracy.
Here’s the Atlantic article that formed the basis of this book.
Another successful summer swim season with the South Riding Stingrays has just ended–with Sophia making Divisionals and Max becoming a Colonial Swim League All Star for the first time!
Thanks to the Strategic Management Society (SMS) for hosting another successful planning meeting in Frankfurt, Germany–this time for the SMS conference in Minneapolis in the Fall! It was a pleasure working with you for the last time as Chair of the Strategy Process IG!
Just finished co-coaching Sophia’s Spring soccer season with the Jaguars–thanks to my head coach Eric and to Loudoun Soccer for another great season!
Great game last night in Washington DC’s Audi Field with DC United coming back in the second half for a 3-3 tie against Chicago Fire.
From today’s Wall Street Journal…
By Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps, & Olivier Sibony (Palgrave Macmillan)
Just used this book for the first time in my undergraduate strategy capstone course with very positive student reactions…
Solving complex problems and selling their solutions is critical for personal and organizational success. For most of us, however, it doesn’t come naturally and we haven’t been taught how to do it well. Research shows a host of pitfalls trips us up when we try: We’re quick to believe we understand a situation and jump to a flawed solution. We seek to confirm our hypotheses and ignore conflicting evidence. We view challenges incompletely through the frameworks we know instead of with a fresh pair of eyes. And when we communicate our recommendations, we forget our reasoning isn’t obvious to our audience.
How can we do it better?
In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help readers tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide readers through each step in the process: from how to state, structure and then solve problems to how to sell the solutions.
Written in an engaging style by a trio of experts with decades of experience researching, teaching and consulting on complex business problems, this book will be an indispensable manual for anyone interested in creating value by helping their organizations crack the problems that matter most.
–Book cover description
Happy to share that I have been awarded a one-year Ave Tucker Fellowship at George Washington University’s School of Business.
Named after George Washington University’s Board of Trustee member Avram S. Tucker, this fellowship recognizes faculty members who “displayed good teaching performance, as well as recent scholarly productivity, prospects for continued publications in top outlets, and records of research leadership and mentoring of junior scholars.”
My wife Erin got me hooked onto this fascinating Podcast detailing the downfall of Theranos and its charismatic founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
Now I’m seriously considering to make this my first ever Podcast case study for my strategy capstone course (replacing my usual class discussion of the WorldCom case study…)
Another great Spring Break trip for the Walter family in Punta Cana (including the mandatory 6am beach walks with Max)
Just started listening to Adam Grants’ latest podcast series called WorkLife. Excellent and highly entertaining insights on how to, in Adam’s own words, make work not suck.
After years of nagging and emotional blackmail by my kids, I finally agreed to get a puppy: A Havanese the kids named Fitzgerald (Fitz). And guess who’s doing the 5am walks with Fitz before work…
By Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, & Sven Smit (Wiley)
Several times a year, top management teams enter the strategy room with lofty goals and the best of intentions: they hope to assess their situation and prospects honestly, and mount a decisive, coordinated response toward a common ambition. Then reality intrudes. By the time they get to the strategy room, they find it is already crowded with egos and competing agendas. Jobs—even careers—are on the line, so caution reigns. The budget process intervenes, too. You may be discussing a five-year strategy, but everyone knows that what really matters is the first-year budget. So, many managers try to secure resources for the coming year while deferring other tough choices as far as possible into the future.
Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick explores in depth the social dynamics that undermine strategic dialogue and breed incrementalism. It also underscores the real, and very challenging, odds of crafting strategies that will lead to dramatic performance improvement.
–From the Publisher
Enjoyed a great time skiing with the guys (Jorge Rivera & Mark Clark) in Snowshoe, WV
From the Walter Family!
Had the great privilege to co-lead (with Jonathan Tuteur from Tsymmetry and Maria Sinagra from Deloitte) an undergraduate Mentoring & Immersion Program for Consulting (MIPC) session for our impressive MIPC students. Thanks to Milinda Balthrop for organizing–my co-leads and I are looking forward to Part II later this month!
By J. D. Vance (Harper)
A little more controversial than my usual business book recommendations, Hillbilly Elegy paints a striking and thought-provoking portrait of contemporary America and is definitely worth a read.
Greetings from Strategic Management Society’s 38th Annual Conference in Paris, where I served as the Program Chair for the Strategy Process Interest Group as well as the co-chair of the Executive Discoveries Series.
We had a great time on our annual vacation in the Outer Banks, NC, with friends and family! And we were not the only ones as you can see in the video my friend Greg shot with his drone early one morning about 300 feet out into the ocean…
By Keith Ferrazzi (Crown Business)
A little over-the-top but, overall, excellent advice on how to become a master networker…
After becoming a Davidson Young Scholar a few months back, Max was just accepted into Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth program! Looking forward to the unique opportunities these programs have to offer for him…