Marc Sirkin's Mindnumbing Thoughts

I just finished reading a neat little book called " Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership through Storytelling " on a colleagues recommendation and really loved it. In short, it's a neat little fable about a Squirrel with a great idea on how to save her company, Squirrel, Inc. She thinks the company needs to stop burying nuts and start storing them! It's a quckie read but I took some key lessons in storytelling with me. How do you persuade people to change? How do you get people working together? How do you share knowledge? How do you tame the grapevine? How do you communicate who you are? How do you transmit values? How do you lead people into the future? Each chapter takes our hero through a different type of storytelling, each one optimized for the desired effects. It's a fun, quickie read that will leave you wanting to tell more stories!

Microsoft bought the entire terminal corridor at JFK and I just so happened to have my flip with me. Silly little video, but hey, I'm silly.

Cross posted from my golf blog ... I just finished reading a terrific book " How Tiger Does It " by Brad Kearns. It provides some great insights into Tiger's life and how he maintains his competitive edge. The book is much more interesting however, when read from a parent's point of view, I think. The author talks a lot about kids and parenting (he must have his own!) and translating Tiger's winning ways into tools you can give your kids. The biggest takeway for me, across the board however is the idea that your child must be internally motivated (pure motivation), and that motivation must come from inside them. My daughters both play sports (softball, basketball, soccer and golf) but never, ever practice on their own without being asked. Never. They do however, read, write and practice their instruments. My younger one draws pictures just because she feels like it. It's hard as a parent who knows that in order to get better, your kids have to practice - but t

I spent the day in NYC at the Forum One Marketing and Communities Conference (tag # moc2008 ) yesterday and had a pretty good time. I was happy to get out of my office dungeon for a bit and meet some new people. To follow the twitter stream, start here. I don't have much time for a completely coherent blog post, but did take a lot of notes during the day. I organized them into a top X list (let's see how many are worth listing) and go from there. These are mostly in chronological order as I read down through my notes. Heather Gold was terrific (a bit like Sarah Silverman if you ask me). She's funny as hell and led a kickoff discussion. "Presentation as conversation" is what I wrote down. During that same session, this quote popped for me as well: "Vulnerability leads to connection." How true! My experiences managing online communities prove this over and over again. I can be scary to allow yourself to be vulnerable in an online community, but it goes a