A couple weeks ago I delivering the opening keynote at an agricultural conference. For those of who don’t know, theirs is an industry currently facing significant challenges. A combination of unusually uncooperative weather and unprecedented policy decisions have simultaneously depressed crop supply and prices. Farming is a difficult business, and farmers today are having a…
When I was a high school teacher, I had a 15-year-old Kurdish student in my 9th-grade English class. He was a terrible student, constantly disrespectful and disruptive, completely uninterested in learning, and a huge challenge to my newly-minted teacher self. I spent far too much time trying to stop him from derailing my entire class,…
Maybe you’re staring at next year’s numbers and wondering if your business is going to keep growing. Maybe your company is going through a merger. Maybe you’re getting a divorce. And maybe you just won the lottery and are trying to figure out how to keep everyone you’ve ever known from hitting you up for…
Hello, and welcome to another stupid year! Or another amazing year – it’s really yet to be determined what kind of year it’s going to be. But it definitely promises to be an interesting year, for me at least, because I’m going to become a father. This is officially the last month of my life…
My wife works at a giant company which recently announced they were going to merge with another giant company in order to create an ever gianter company with a handful of baby subsidiary spinoff companies that will each also be giant companies all by themselves. From the outside, it looks to me like a not-so-subtle…
Surprise! Last month I told you that a had a fun surprise for you this month, and here it is – my wife and I are expecting our first child! We decided that we had too much disposable income and free time, and anyway I’ve been sleeping far too well lately. There was this one…
October is a season for change, which is why I think it appropriate to share with you the story of a friend of mine who is considering changing careers. His story, I think, is a fairly common one: he works for a small company, is grateful for the opportunity they gave him when they hired…
Victory is mine! After six months of living in Old Mexico, I am finally moving back home. Texas is a magical place – I saw a pterodactyl for one thing, and I even attended my first rodeo, which is where I learned that I know absolutely nothing about ranching. My wife is coming back with…
I’m about to end a six-month stint living in Freeport, Texas. My house, and 90% of my stuff, are back in Michigan, but I’ve been here since September because my wife has been working on a temporary assignment at one of her company’s Texas facilities. Having moved frequently in the last few years, I came…
So you’ve want to roll out a new product/website/initiative/compensation structure, and you already know what your people are going to say. They don’t see the need for it, or that’s not how you’ve always done things, or they don’t think you should rock the boat. (That’s my favorite, by the way, since boats are literally…