leadership dots

A nearby town has recently acquired three troll sculptures as a tourist draw and nod to the city’s history as a lumber mill. They are massive and impressive, and a unique way to highlight the town’s story. One of the local trolls is housed inside an old train depot, and the entire building is filled with branches, creating a cave effect before you arrive at the troll itself.<...

Instead of just providing the temperature and forecast, my weather app has started adding commentary along with the numbers. Examples include: “It’s a perfect day to be outside,” or “The sky can’t make up its mind. Honestly, that’s perfectly fine.”

I wonder whose job it is to write these cute little quips and why someone thought they were necessary. It seems like a ...

How many times have you forgotten your server’s name at a restaurant? Knowing who is assigned to you makes it much easier to ask someone else to send “your” server back to the table, or to ask for them specifically on your next trip.

A local restaurant solved those problems and made it easier for the server to remember which tables they were handling by utilizing a ...

Many resources on effective negotiation boil down to checklists: be prepared, know your bottom line, learn about the other person’s priorities, anchor the negotiation by making the first offer, ask questions, etc. But what makes the greatest difference is your mindset and how you approach the negotiation process.

The definition that resonated most with my class and ...

In a webinar about his book Inside the Box, author David Epstein promoted the value of constraints and shared research about how limitations actually make you more creative. The brain wants to follow the path of least resistance, so it takes the easy route first, even though that is not where creativity lies.

The phrase that stuck with me is “It has never b...