My dog died last night. Despite a frantic, late night dash to the animal ER and some exceptional measures, Nimo couldn’t be saved. He was my companion for more than 11 years. He was with me, showing that quiet, unshakable — almost mythic — canine love, through some achingly difficult times. Yeah, he was just…
Continue ReadingThis Memorial Day: In Remembrance of Ritual
Every Memorial Day, as a child, I recall the family dressing up, loading a variety of floral arrangements, and trekking across country to spend the day visiting cemeteries. The lumbering station wagon would kick up a mighty plume of dust as we pulled into the necropolis. (In my memory, it’s always a dry, dusty, unbearably…
Continue ReadingMeditation on Gratitude
It’s Memorial Day, and that’s an apt opportunity to reflect on gratitude. My father is Vietnam Veteran. He was drafted in 1966 and answered the call — even though he had a lot of life to put on hold at the time: married only a few years, trying to start a family, just settling in…
Continue ReadingBusiness Building Community
Thom Ruhe capped off this morning’s 1 Million Cups (congrats on the brand new site going live!) 1st birthday event with some thoughtful comments. One sentence especially struck me: “I think community is becoming a form of currency in our economy.” I responded, via Twitter, “Always has been, we just see it now.” I’m still…
Continue ReadingThink like a Social Scientist
I encourage everyone to think like a social scientist. Not all the time — that would be exhausting and you’d probably be accused of being a “creepy, monomaniacal over-analyzer” — but you should think like a social scientist when it matters. Why? Because you’ll be more likely to make better decisions. Thinking like a scientist…
Continue ReadingAttention!
What is Attention? Attention is the focus of our mental resources on some information, while filtering out other information. Attention is crucial to everything from better decisions to better relationships, yet everything about us — our bodies, minds, cultures, and societies — encourages us to pay as little attention as possible. Attention is a gateway:…
Continue ReadingWhat impresses you?
In one of my LinkedIn groups, a member (Shannon Miller) asked a thoughtful question that prompted me to dig the following bits out of my archive and post it. So what impresses me? Three things impress me, every time, without fail. Real expertise. Real expertise is qualitatively different, even from someone who has much learning…
Continue ReadingA Wealth of Data We Don’t Always See
You’re the expert on your enterprise, but we tend to get so caught up in the day-to-day details of making it work that we all lose sight of the forest for the trees. Even Small and Medium-Sized Organizations have access to a wealth of data. But there are three main challenges to making it useful….
Continue ReadingPredicting the 2012 Presidential Election
In the days leading up to the 2012 Presidential Election, I posted my Electoral College predictions and analysis to my Facebook stream. As social scientist and a data geek, I’ve run statistical election predictions since 1996. This time, I used it as an opportunity to field test some new statistical modeling techniques I’m developing for…
Continue ReadingPrelude to “The Wall”
This morning, my wife was running errands and stopped at the local gas station to fill up. The corner gas station was hopping, and she waited her turn at the pump. A space opened, she pulled in, and began to pump her gas. Across the parking lot, about half-a-dozen young, African-American men were hanging out…
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