Every day it seems like there are more articles about inflation, the cost of living, or interest rates. The thought of rising prices reminds me of a book I read a few years ago. It was called The 10 Golden Rules of Customer Service and the Story of the $6,000 Egg by Todd and Debb…
Can you think of a time when you learned something so obvious you couldn’t figure out why anyone had to explain it to you? That’s how it is with the lesson behind The Motive by Patrick Lencioni, a book recommended to me by our soon-to-be-retired Fire Chief Tracy Fox. How often do we associate our job…
About a month ago, we discussed Dale Carnegie’s guidance to never “criticize, condemn or complain” if we want to learn How to Win Friends and Influence People. Then, two weeks ago we looked at Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen, which offered a modern approach to this principle, using stories to cast those…
In December 2017, a group of researchers found the oldest known cave painting in Indonesia. The painting was discovered in a cave called Leang Tedongnge (lay-ang tay-dong-nge), which is located in a low area prone to flooding in South Central Indonesia. The only time the cave is usually accessible is April to October when the…
For most of us, finding fault is the most natural and immediate response to the world around us. This is the result of something called “negative bias,” and it has a long history of serving to protect us. This fascinating concept seems to make so much sense when explained, so if you feel bad for…
Do you remember playing with a Magic 8-Ball as a kid? While it was fun to ask a question, shake the ball, and laugh at the answer, I do not remember ever going to the toy when I needed advice. Can you imagine sitting in an important meeting at work and watching your boss pull…
“Libertarian Paternalism” is a phrase that sounds more like some form of new-age parenting than a philosophy for governance, but in Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness that is exactly what the writers lay out. The idea is to present a form of governance and policymaking in which the people retain the right to make…
Not every book in The Reading List will be a non-fiction self-help book. Those aren’t in our high school English classes because the stories contained in fictional literature can often teach us just as much or sometimes more than those non-fiction manuals. One great example is To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that is not without…
“Listen my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…” Thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, most of us know the story of Paul Revere riding to warn the colonists that the British troops were beginning their invasion of the American colonies. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell tells us that Paul…