Get notified of Words&Dirt updates

Tag: business

Notes From a Pandemic: April 18th, 2020

Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. Up to this point, these journals have focused almost entirely on how my habits and modes of thought have been disrupted and recast by a powerful pathogen. I’d like to take a moment now to reflect on the myriad ways in which life […]

Notes From a Pandemic: April 4th, 2020

Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future.   “Getting sick is different now.” In a conversation with my wife Jessie, these words tumbled out of my mouth before I could give much thought to what they meant. This is a fairly common experience for me, which means I spend a […]

Review: Joan Cohen’s “Land of Last Chances”

Joan Cohen’s Land of Last Chances is not the kind of novel that typically interests me, but when JKS Communications offered to send me an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review, I took them up on it. The book has some positive features, but my overall reading experience was dominated by boredom and increasing […]

Review: Chris Voss’s “Never Split the Difference”

Chris Voss spent decades as a top hostage negotiator for the FBI––an experience that granted him a unique set of skills and perspectives. In Never Split the Difference, Voss and co-author Tahl Raz articulate these skills and perspectives, promising to demystify the art of negotiation and leave readers better prepared to negotiate with increased confidence […]

Review: Jillian Medoff’s “This Could Hurt”

Jillian Medoff’s This Could Hurt is a fun and heartfelt fictionalization of contemporary corporate life. The book explores the lives of a small group of executives who run the Human Resources Department at Ellery Consumer Research, a firm struggling to keep itself together in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. While I did not find the […]

Review: Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter’s “12: The Elements of Great Managing”

Less than a year and a half ago, I had absolutely no business experience. Today, I am part of the management team for a small but steadily growing business in the town where I grew up and hope to live for the rest of my life. This has been the most unexpected and dynamic development […]

Quotes 4-26-2016

“The field of evolutionary cognition requires us to consider every species in full. Whether we are studying hand anatomy, trunk multi-functionality, face perception, or greeting rituals, we need to familiarize ourselves with all facets of the animal and its natural history before trying to figure out its mental level. And instead of testing animals on […]

Review: Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations”

I’m not sure I’ve ever been so annoyed by a book that taught me so much. Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations is, in some ways, exactly what it claims to be––a guide for creating organizations with internal dynamics that radically diverge from prevailing models. But it’s also a highly repetitive text with a lot of fuzzy […]

Quotes 3-3-2016

“The walls of a cathedral had to be not just good, but perfect. This was because the cathedral was for God, and also because the building was so big that the slightest lean in the walls, the merest variation from the absolutely true and level, could weaken the structure fatally. Tom’s resentment turned to fascination. […]

Review: Geoff Smart and Randy Street’s “Who”

As a newcomer to the world of business, I don’t possess the background or knowledge base to properly critique this book. I learned some interesting information and strategies, but am not sure how useful they will be until I’ve implemented them. Who is very accessible and easy to understand, and it seems like the authors did their […]