Blurring the line between Wants and Needs

Nearly everything you do involves a choice. With the exception of breathing and eating, there are very few non-negotiable activities. You can even make choices about what you eat and where you breathe. So, on a micro level, you are positioned more frequently than you realize to “get what you want.”

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Clip Your Wings and Soar

Sticking to a resolution made on January 1st quite often requires you to do things that are counter to your nature; to swim upstream against your native instincts. That’s the problem with resolutions: they generally demand that you to do less of what you love, or more of what you loathe.

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Free eBook

Here’s your FREE eBook

No strings attached.

No forms to fill out.

No box-tops to collect.

No stems & seeds that . . . . oops, wrong century.

I started writing a monthly column in November 2001. The first two were just emails to about 50 friends but when those folks started forwarding it to

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Keeping Your Story Straight

One critical element in a well-written novel is that the characters seldom do anything “out of character.”

Accomplished novelists take care to give their characters believable behaviors by crafting credible backstories. My favorite novels are those where normal people react to abnormal situations in ways that are outside my own experience, but totally acceptable given

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It’s Not Who You Know, Or What You Know – It’s HOW You Learn It

[Note - this piece was originally published in May 2005. The current graduation season got me to thinking about what and why we learn - and I think there's still great relevance in this one from the archive].

When I was kid, the entire collection of everything I needed to know was contained in a

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Treat Your Employees Like Machines

[Counter Intelligence - May 2011] I’ve had the pleasure lately of getting to know members of a local chapter of STC – The Society of Technical Communicators. These are the folks who write Operator and Policy Manuals for complex machines, software applications and services. One member has been writing articles for medical journals for 30

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What do you pay them to do?

Counter Intelligence – April 2011

What Do You Pay Them to Do?

I serve on the board of a small private school in my town and because of some previous non-profit experience I was asked to help with the task of creating a new Employee Manual. During one of our committee meetings, someone joked that,

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The Two Things

Note: this is an OLD column–originally posted in 2004. Like good wine, cigars and leather jackets some thoughts just get better and better with age. For the benefit of recent subscribers and those who’ve forgotten – here goes:

May I Introduce “Thing One” and “Thing Two”

Two of my clients are approaching change in their

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Are we wrong about attitude?

Do we have it wrong about attitude?

As I watched my hometown team win its first-ever World Series it struck me how all the players credited their “will to win” and that very little was said about actual skill. Team members lined up to talk 

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Counter Intelligence (The Podcast) Beta Test

This is the initial public beta of my new podcast – Counter Intelligence (The Podcast).

Once I get the kinks worked out, there will be regular installments from previous columns that still have current relevance, plus on-going commentary on my writing.

Regular subscribers to the monthly column will be able to hear me “think aloud”

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