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Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity Sprint 2023
Better Business and Company Culture
The Magic of Holding Back
A business is usually defined by what it is able to do. But the real magic in building a company that stays -- at least for some firms -- is defining what it won't do. Artificial constraints have been self-imposed at companies as different as Toyota, Chick-fil-A, and Berkshire Hathaway, and those things they hold back are important to what makes them stand out.
If Ben Franklin Were Your Business Partner
America's first real autobiography was also its first real self-help book -- and its first business how-to manual. Benjamin Franklin wasn't just a Founding Father for our politics, he is an under-appreciated source of business wisdom that makes as much sense in the 21st Century as it did when Thomas Jefferson was only a toddler. If Ben were your business partner, he'd be anything but silent. These are the top 25 thoroughly modern business lessons he left behind.
Warren Buffett's Free Advice
For more than half a century, Warren Buffett has been freely dispensing immeasurably valuable advice about how to grow wealth. It all comes down to one fundamental skill and one fundamental temperament: Learning how to value a business, and having the discipline to act only when values and prices grow apart. Most people are afraid to practice either one. But for those who adopt both the skill and the temperament, the value of the lessons goes well beyond the stock market.
Preserving Institutional Memory
How to ensure that a firm doesn't lose the accumulated wisdom of its employees when they retire or leave for other reasons.
Doing More With Less
How to put the lessons of Toyota, Honda, and "lean" manufacturing (including benchmarks, continuous improvement, and training) to work inside a firm so you can get more done with less. Tips and strategies for providing world-class service even as budgets are drawn tight and the workforce shrinks -- while simultaneously making the work more pleasant to do.
The Experience Gap
Lots of products and services have improved -- often measurably -- in the last generation. Yet other experiences remain astonishingly unimproved. This experience gap creates frustration -- particularly for those who have been subjected to market forces that have caused them to improve their own products or services who then have to deal with unimproved experiences as consumers. And it's bound to remain on the increase: Lots of jobs are compelled to do more with less, or to improve or be rendered obsolete. How can you avoid being an agent of disappointment to your clients and customers?
Business Motivational
Four Guideposts to Progress
A complex world calls for better heuristics. Four of them seem like good baselines for both public and private decision-making: Make money, have fun, clean up after yourself, and mind your business.
Little Habits, More Often
Resolutions are often about habits, and no magic rule exists for how long it takes to form a habit. But higher-frequency, lower-stakes resolutions for self-improvement would be great cultural achievements, if we could make them as routine as the nature of changing sports seasons.
What is Anyone Working For?
There have always been jobs to do, whether the prevailing economic system was capitalism, socialism, feudalism, or hunting-gathering. Blaming anyone's current lack of comfort on "capitalism" is impossibly dumb, if capitalism is defined (correctly) as the idea that people should freely exchange things of value and be free to quantify those things as "capital". Nothing in history has ever worked so effectively to improve the material condition of human lives as capital-based market economics. Nothing real in this world comes from consuming "vibes".
Industrial Improvement
Maintenance: How Not to Hate It
Catholic Homiletics
The ACES of Homiletics
A homily rests on four pillars:
- ATTENTION: Our bodies may be captive at Mass, but our minds are not
- CONNECTION: Old knowledge needs to be connected to some new insight
- EXECUTION: How this day's message goes into action
- SIMPLICITY: Adults have 5 to 7 minutes of attention to give you, but beyond that, it's work. Make one point well, then make a new one next Sunday.
Storytelling Without Self-Centering
Storytelling is indisputably the best way to communicate a lasting message from one human being to another. But a story doesn't have to be your story in order to stick -- in fact, stories in which you are the central character should be few and far between. Your relatability as a human being should come through in what you understand, not the autobiographical details you announce. A homily follows three other stories already told at Mass, and you probably don't come out better than the main protagonist of the stories that preceded yours.
How Long Should This Go On?
Consider the investment you make in a homily, not from your own perspective, but from the time spent in the pews. If you have 100 members of a community gathered, and they listen quietly for twelve minutes, then you've just occupied 20 person-hours of time with your words. Were they worth it?
Psychology of the Pews
Distilling Your Thoughts to a Purer Message
Trainer
All training is delivered by Brian Gongol, who holds a Master of Education degree and bachelor's degrees in communications and economics. He has been cited on business topics in the Los Angeles Times, the Omaha World-Herald, Business Insider, and several academic journals, including the Journal of Applied Economic Sciences, the Journal of Management Policy and Practice, and the Eastern Economic Journal.