07.22.2021 Below, design guru Richard Farson, whom I knew, says, “Design is everything. Everything is design. We are all designers.” I passionately believe that design is “everything.” It is the primo differentiator. But what is it? I sincerely hope you take the quotes below seriously and imbed them into your…

07.22.2021 David Ogilvy wrote in his book, Ogilvy on Advertising, that few copywriters are ambitious. “‘Raise your sights!’ I exhort them. ‘Blaze new trails! Hit the ball out of the park!! Compete with the immortals!!!” That sends chills down my spine. Chills of delight. This set of quotes is about…

04 September 2014 (Revised 24 June 2021) — NOTE: The material herein is NOT under copyright. My goal is grand theft — by you, the reader. I hope you will find some of the contents of value, and will therefore extract and utilize what you will, directly or indirectly, with or without attribution. (Yes, it does. “Hey, this…

His eminence, Peter Drucker, once said, “Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.” As for me, my Ph.D. dissertation was labeled by my committee as the “first [Stanford business school] dissertation on the topic of implementation.” My subsequent research at McKinsey & Co., which led to In Search of…

Herewith an opener: It’s an age-old argument. Bad systems beat good people. Or: good people beat bad systems. Obviously truth on both sides. Got into it for the umpteenth time on twitter the other day. Which reminded me of a previously unpublished paper I wrote titled: “Systems Have Their Place. Second Place.” All Yours, Tom

Best practices for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic seem to shift by the minute. …

When Taking Your Time (Really) Matters — “Steve and Jony would discuss corners for hours and hours.” — Laurene Powell Jobs My first book, In Search of Excellence can be summarized in six words: Hard is soft. Soft is hard. My next fifteen books can be summarized in six words: Hard is soft. Soft is hard. My…