<div class="et_pb_text_inner" data-et-multi-view="{"schema":{"content":{"desktop":" u201cOh, Man! I canu2019t believe I did that.u201d n Iu2019m reviewing my life (so far). I suppose that might be expected for someone my age. After all, looking back is easier than looking forward, reflecting is easier than planning to change and at seventy-five thereu2019s a lot to review. n The presenting […]
July 4th – US Independence Day Amid the fireworks and cookouts, Ferris wheels, cotton candy and win-a-stuffie pellet-gun booths at Lion’s Club sponsored carnivals, amid the politicians’ speechifying, “hooray-for-our-side-doncha ever-vote-for-them-evil-bastards-agin,” amid apple pie and chit’lins, samosas, spring rolls, and empanadas, thick-steaks and veggie burgers, Let Us Remember. Remember that 247 years ago today a group […]
The fallacy of values-based consulting “Wait. What?” My regular readers should be forgiven for their cognitive dissonance. I have written often about my consulting values: Be authentic Be helpful Stay focused on results, I have even suggested that all consultants should have these same values. I might even still believe that, despite how self-centered and […]
I call myself a writer now. Sometimes words flow like a river; sometimes they are dammed up. Not elegantly locked behind a Grand Coulee-Hoover architectural-engineering wonder, but stuck in mud and sticks and crumpled leaves emerging in tiny trickles from the buck-toothed beaver monstruction or clogged in neural ruts unable to break free. Yesterday morning […]
Hiring Consultants = Weakness? My social circles do not afford opportunity to attend many black-tie events, but I do own a tuxedo. So, even though I thought it pretentious, I attended my thirtieth LBS reunion formal dress dinner in the Kent castle. “Boards are simply intolerable.” A tight circle formed around Mike, our only a […]
“I don’t get no respect, y’know what I mean.” “You know the definition of a consultant?” I was at a wedding dinner and the question came from another friend of the father of the bride. I had retired recently, but this entrepreneur didn’t accept that as the answer to the “What do you do?” question. […]
“Aaaask Alan” In the late ‘80s when my wife’s children were young and we first began dating, when an unusual question came up and I would know the answer, they’d say “Aaaaask Alan!” Everyone would laugh that I was the font of useless knowledge. That actually used to happen to me a lot. Billie would […]
“I know I should . . . , but I really want. . .” The angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other is a common visual device in cartoons: Tom the cat chooses whether to eat Jerry the mouse, Sylvester the cat struggles with a similar dilemma with Tweety Bird or as is […]
Everybody wants to be a star My brother-in-law was an English teacher before he went to the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business for his MBA. He was hired by Cooper’s & Lybrand as a consultant. He soon went to Indonesia putting a management accounting system in the state-owned oil company. Somehow I developed […]
“I hope I die before I get old” Well, that didn’t happen. Not for me nor for Pete Townshend, who wrote that song for The Who’s debut album released in 1965, the year I graduated from high school. I remember the song, though I was blissfully unaware that it had been banned by the BBC. […]
