Planning is deciding what you will do. Yes? No, that’s only half right. In planning, whether personal or organizational, some of the most important decisions you can make are what you will say no to, what you decide ahead of time you will not do. It’s all too easy to simply respond to requests or ideas from others, to be reactive. The problem is that others then set your agenda, not you.
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No Surprises
When I was a new manager, and one who avoided conflict like a cliché, I had a very hard time telling people when some aspect of their performance was poor. So I’d delay and delay until the annual review, and then disgorge all the problems at once to the unsuspecting reviewee. Needless to say, the conversations did not go well.
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Behind Every Good Declaration of Independence
John Locke is not just a character on Lost. He’s one of the most important philosophers of the last five hundred years on issues of the self and of political theory. When it comes to identifying how the United States came to be in the first place, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government written in a hundred years beforehand, is a good place to begin.
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Taking Stock
Next week IVP undertakes its annual ritual of taking stock. I don’t mean we will evaluate how well we did or didn’t hit our goals for the end of our fiscal year on June 30. Rather almost all office personnel are commandeered by those in our accounting department and our distribution center to “do inventory.” I and my colleagues will don lightweight grubbies (the forecast is for the high eighties) and partner with our more warehouse-savvy comrades to count books.
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Titlenomics
Rip-off titles are nothing new in publishing. One title of a bestseller begets another title. Patricia Cohen gives us a recent catalog of such efforts, in particular the spawn of the Levitt and Dubner bestseller that are hitting the market now.
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Break Up Google
Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller–American greats and American robber barons of a bygone era. The era may be gone, but American robber barons are as current as Twitter–at least that’s what Daniel Lyons thinks.
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Redeeming the Office
I admit I’m a fan of The Office with it’s all-too-painfully-true portrayal of life in the cubes. One time I found myself yelling at the screen, “But I don’t want to be Michael!” There was nothing to do but admit the truth, of course.
A colleague at work recently drew our attention to a brief parody of The Office from the folks at Rightnow.org. The camerawork and the writing are spot on. No doubt it has a bit more redeeming social value than even the original. So check it out here.
What Students Want in Used Texts
What do students look for in used textbooks? Well, it’s often more than just paying less money–as important as that is.
Further to my blog about Kindle DX and textbooks, Clive Thompson notes the work of Microsoft researcher Cathy Marshall on this topic. She “found that university students carefully study used textbooks before buying them.” Are they hoping to learn about biology while drinking their triple-shot latte without having to pay for the book? No.
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Saving the Textbook–or Not
We know the problems with textbooks: stratospheric retail prices that have put the used book market into hyperdrive that has forced publishers to put out new editions more frequently that has pushed retail prices even higher. Who will save us from this cycle of futility?
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The Problem of the Past and the Future
A colleague went to a professional conference recently and came away with these quotable quotes from various presenters:
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