UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING BLOG

For business people determined to make a difference in life, the competition is not the competition.

Time is.

As Steve Jobs rests in hiding seeking to recover from what must be a life threatening illness, he knows the only real threat to his ability to build on this extraordinary triumphs, is mortality. Put bluntly, that his time may be up.

I have always believed that there is a tight connection, a powerful and uncanny analogy, between business and personal relationships. They appear from a distance to be two different worlds but they are actually mirror images of one another.

The camouflage occurs because the settings are so different: one takes place in a conference room; the other in a bed.

We grow up believing–because we are told it is so–that certainty is the cornerstone of learning.

A teacher presents us with a “fact,” we memorize it and are tested on our ability to recall what the professor at the lectern posited as the gospel. If we can absorb and regurgitate it, we are anointed as magna cum laude.

This great nation was founded on the idea that government must be tiny, must serve and cannot tax against the will of the people. It was a time when honorable people went to Washington not to get rich, but in spite of the fact that they would not.

Yesterday, I met with Don Imus at his apartment on Central Park West in Manhattan.

The man born on a cattle ranch who joined the Marines and went on to reinvent radio sat by his fireplace and talked, laughed and sparred with me about life, death, love, business, marketing, morons, geniuses and why he doesn’t shake hands with anyone.