Recreational athletes train because they enjoy the activity and they compete so they can tell themselves (and their friends) stories about the race. Their training routines are discretionary and their finish times are all about bragging rights. Professional athletes train because it’s their job. Their training is unpleasant, stressful and......
It’s easy to complain about how things are going, especially when they’re not going well. But even with the best intentions, complaining doesn’t move the organization in a new direction. Sometimes people complain to attract attention to an important issue. Sometimes it’s out of frustration, sometimes out of sadness and......
At some point, what worked last time won’t work this time. It’s not if the business model will go belly-up, it’s when. There are two choices. We can bury our heads in the sands of the status quo, or we can proactively observe the world in a forward-looking way and......
When the work is new, it can’t be defined and managed like work that has been done before. Sometimes there’s a tendency to spend months to define the market, the detailed specification and the project timeline and release the package as a tidal wave that floods the organization with new......
A car has a warning light to protect its engine from running too hot, and when the light goes off you pull over immediately and shut it down. You made a big investment in your car, and you want to make sure it runs for a long time. You respect......
Everyone knows innovation is difficult, but there’s no best way to make it easier. And everyone knows there’s plenty of opportunities to make innovation more effective, but, again, there’s no best way. Clearly, there are ways to improve the process, and new tools can help, but the right process improvements......
If you had a choice to make an extra year’s salary or live an extra year, which would you choose? If you had a choice to make an extra month’s salary or live an extra month, make the same choice? What about the trade between a week’s pay and a......
With a zero-sum game, if you eat a slice of pie, that’s one less for me; and if I eat one, that’s one less for you. A simple economic theory, but life isn’t simple like that. Here’s how life can go. Get with expectation – I expect you to give,......
Big companies hold tightly to what they have until they feel threatened by upstarts, and not before. They mobilize only when they see their sales figures dip below the threshold of tolerability, and no sooner. And if they’re the market leaders, they delay their mobilization through rationalization. The dip is......
Shipulski On Design
Copyright © 2013 Mike Shipulski. All Rights Reserved.
The Shipulski On Design
