I’ve always been turned off by the concept of networking. In my mind, networking conjures images of crowded rooms filled with swarms of extroverts shaking hands and smiling insincerely, everyone more eager to talk than to listen. Over the din of clinking highball glasses, I picture back-slapping and horn-tooting, business card and favor trading, and … Continue reading Building a Vibrant Network
Can you imagine if the universe of what we know (or, said another way, what we know about the universe) were restricted to what we can see with our naked eyes? The classic Powers of Ten short film, created in 1977, does a marvelous job conveying the relative size of things. Beginning with a view … Continue reading Making the Invisible Visible
In honor of a recent life milestone, I’ve been reflecting back on some memorable moments. My family will tell you I have a “terrible memory.” Case in point: We watch a movie together and not until the very end do I realize that I’ve already seen the film. (This happens often.) I don’t retain digits … Continue reading What We Remember
2022 didn’t start out exactly as I’d planned. At the end of December, I relished re-connecting with family that I hadn’t seen in two years, immersing in holiday celebrations, family meals, movies, hikes, and board games. I also took some time to reflect on the whirlwind that was 2021 and planned for 2022, considering how … Continue reading The Best Laid Plans of Managers and Moms
This is my 38th and final Mother of Invention blog post of 2021, a personal experiment I kicked off in January. Over the course of this year, I’ve published nearly 45,000 words, on topics as varied as climate change, summer camp, hybrid cloud, corporate jargon, resilience, and artificial intelligence. My posts have been viewed almost … Continue reading Behind the Blogs
I’ve been thinking about mortality lately. This was spurred by a feeling of being a little bit “off” — an elevated heart rate, chest tightness, something not quite right. Net is I’m fine: I’m thankful to have a clean bill of health. Nevertheless, a health scare — like other close calls such as surviving a … Continue reading Living Well
In life and in work, we are faced with hundreds of decisions every day — some relatively inconsequential (what to wear? when to break for lunch? where to meet up with colleagues or friends?), others career and life changing (which job to take? how to allocate budgets? who to partner with or promote?). Not all … Continue reading Decisions, Decisions
A thirsty crow found a pitcher with some water in it, but so little was there that, try as she might, she could not reach it with her beak, and it seemed as though she would die of thirst within sight of the remedy. At last, she hit upon a clever plan. She began dropping … Continue reading Mother of Invention
If you stop and think about it for a moment, solving puzzles is a pretty strange pastime. We spend hours reconstructing a fragmented image or untwisting a multicolored cube or filling in numbers on a grid. To what end? Yet there’s something so compelling about puzzles that keeps us coming back for more, and it … Continue reading How Puzzling!
Like I did, some of you may have received a blank email a few months ago accidentally sent from HBO Max with the subject, “Integration Test Email #1.” Later that day, HBO tweeted an explanation: “As the jokes pile in, yes, it was the intern.” While many of the 6,500+ comments offered support (“we’ve all … Continue reading Fostering a Blameless Culture
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