Right now we have a kind of mania for the idea of collaboration. There’s a mistaken idea that collaboration is democratic. It is not. But team leaders too often focus on what can be accomplished by treating team members as…
There was a time when Lehman Brothers, Woolworth, PanAm and Kodak were among the colossi of their industries. They were going to live forever. Then they died. So what went wrong? Why do some organizations continue to grow even as…
When people are presented with disagreeable facts they tend to double down on their own truth. Regardless of who you voted for in the last election, for example, you were probably complicit in editing data that didn’t suit your preferences—and…
Today we live in a world of unparalleled choice and unlimited information. In theory we have everything we need to make great choices and be happier than ever. In reality, we have information and choice overload and companies that can…
Companies regularly measure diversity in terms of gender, race or age, implying that demographic mix translates into high performance. But at the same time, companies make deliberate efforts to iron out differences. Hiring managers and recruiters explicitly look for “fit”.…
Tesla's announcement of the Model 3 brings traditional marketing tests into the R&D phase and locks up marketshare before competitors can respond. Published in The Huffington Post, April 28, 2016 by Daryl Twitchell, Jeremy Rabson and Kevin McDermott In Amsterdam last month Tesla Vice-President…
As advertising increasingly uses text less it places more emphasis on images. The problem is that the trend has accelerated at the same time as images have become inherently unstable and morphing in hundreds of different ways in the hands…
It has become commonplace in the digital world to talk about the wisdom of the crowd–the aggregated opinions of everybody. The problem is that the crowd isn’t everybody. The crowd is pockets of interest, loud voices, competing truths. Published in…
When it comes to "Gigs" -- short term or on-demand jobs -- we're feeling the absence of an agreed-upon center. That's the source of the floating unease about the gig economy which seems to be an ever increasing portion of our economy.…
When an animal eats a vegetable it transfers the latter’s power to itself though they occupy different categories. That’s what good acquisitions do. It’s what conventional mergers don’t. Published in The Huffington Post, July 23, 2015 by Kevin McDermott, Daryl Twitchell, Jeremy…