One of the inspirations for what has become my Obey/Rebel project exploring rules in organizations was the 2010 book, Hacking Work, by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein. Subtitled Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results, the primary intended audience of the book is the typical employee, more specifically a typical knowledge worker, with examp...

Putting together some thoughts for a piece I was writing, I asked ChatGPT, "What is it called when you think of something and then start seeing examples of it everywhere?" To which it replied: “ What you're describing is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion. ” "Um, what?" was my first thought. Beca...

I was at a local big-box store the other day and had the need to visit the men’s room. It is a large store and so has a relatively spacious men’s room, with the sinks just inside the entry followed by a row of four urinals. As I walked in I was struck by the fact that the four urinals appeared to be exactly the same, except for one: it...

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Product Management Group meetup and participate in a session lead by Hannah Davison on the topic of Psychology Principles Behind Creating Effective Products. One of the examples that Hannah brought up was free trials of software or services. You know the ones, "Try it free for 7/...

In her post, "The What Not the How of Service Design", Sarah Drummond writes: “I’m witnessing a more negative tipping point right now, when the defined discipline becomes too formulaic because it’s been commoditised and we forget, at the essence of this, it is about designing services and creatively solving problems for organisations a...

On this day in 1984, I made my fifth and final jump at the US Army Airborne School. So many stories I have, and could, tell about those three weeks, but those are for another time. I mention the occasion today only because I heard a mention on the radio that today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I remember noting on that day back ...

If there is indeed a heaven, and your autistic child goes there when they die, will they still be autistic? Over the years I’ve come to believe that asking someone this question about autism in heaven is one of the best ways to understand how they view autism. Even better than asking them whether they believe that autism needs to be cu...

"Do a lot of Mexicans go through there?" was not the response I had expected. "Um...." "A lot of new immigrants from Mexico come from places where they can't do that because the infrastructure isn't good enough." As soon as she said that, it clicked. This wasn't your typical, hastily created, sometimes hand written, sign you often find...

"What's your name?" Emily asked from behind the counter. I knew her name because it was on her name tag. "Who's asking?" I responded, with a slightly snarky tone, hoping she got the joke. "I am." Duh. "My name is Brett. Why do you ask?" "I've been working here for a while now, and thought I should learn the names of my regulars." We ha...

"I know her, we were best friends in kindergarten," the first boy said, followed by something I couldn't quite make out. "I shook her dad's hand at Halloween. Gross." The two boys, age 9 or so, were sitting on their bikes in the middle of the road looking at the house contained by crime scene tape, the house where a woman was murdered ...

Next week at this time, Julie and I will be in Scottsdale, AZ playing tennis. Not just playing tennis, but playing for a National Championship at the USTA League 55 & over Mixed Doubles National Invitational. The crazy thing is that this our third national championship tournament - we played this same tournament last year and also in t...

Dave Gray was the guest of the Service Design Book Club today, where he shared insights and ideas from his book Liminal Thinking. I've had the opportunity talk with Dave and hear him speak about the book several times over the past few years, and each time I learn something new, get something useful from it. Sometimes it is just good t...

Of all the benefits of working remotely, of working at (from?) home, my favorite is the ability to just step away for a few minutes during the day. For me this generally takes the form of a short (a mile or so) walk with the dogs. Unlike a “coffee break” when at the office, stepping completely away allows me to push work to the back, o...

This past weekend I had the opportunity to present a session entitled "You should always follow the rules, except when you shouldn't" at Product camp St. Louis. My session was one of 50 proposed sessions and I was lucky enough to be selected as one of the 30 that was presented. I have to admit not being sure whether anyone would vote f...

I've been following with interest David Heinemeier Hansson's recent posts about his switch from Mac to Windows for both personal and company use. I made a similar switch myself a few years ago, albeit for somewhat different reasons to start, and have come to find many of the same benefits that he has. Although I used (still use) Window...

Today the School of the Possible held our first open house. Over 100 people joined us to hear what the School is all about and learn more about the courses that I and other faculty are working on. It was quite the undertaking, using Zoom and Mural to get that open house feeling. After a main session where Chief Possibilitarian Dave Gra...

The MacGuffin of the latest Mission Impossible film is a seemingly sentient (conscious?), all-knowing, all-powerful artificial intelligence referred to, somewhat ominously and ridiculously at the same time, as "The Entity." There is a scene about half way through the second act in which Gabriel, an agent of The Entity, tries to persuad...

There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Leap Day. Partly for the geekiness of the rules that govern when they occur, but mostly because it was on the last occurrence of this day that my younger son got married. It all started innocently enough, as these things do. The kids were looking at a late winter wedding, sometime in Feb...

As a kid I never really had a grasp of economics, of the "way business gets done". I had no real interest, that I remember, of starting a lemonade stand or any other kind of business. I enjoyed doing the work, and just kind of expected that I'd be rewarded for it. Yeah, it was as interesting as you might think it was. Interestingly, I ...

Pulling together thoughts for my proposed session at ProductCamp STL and upcoming course at The School of the Possible. Here are my four rules about rules, as they apply to an individual subject to the rules of others. 1. Read the manual (or RTFM if you prefer) 2. Consider the consequences, consider the possibilities 3. Always follow t...

I finally picked up a copy of Lou Downe's Good Services: How to design services that work. Why did y'all let me wait so long to do that?!? https://good.services/home Just over 50 pages in, and this book is in my top 3 for service design books. Truth be told, they had me at page 25 with this: “...services often keep a channel as a back-...

A few days ago I wrote a little bit about translation, specifically in the context of poetry as explored in Douglas Hofstadter's book, "Le Ton Beau de Marot." I was thinking about that this evening watching a Brazilian show, dubbed from Portuguese to English, on Netflix. We also had subtitles, in English, turned on (because we pretty m...

Hey, World! Yesterday I pitched ProductCamp St. Louis (I have no affiliation other than as an attendee) and encouraged you to submit a session proposal if you were planning to attend. I, for one, would love to hear more about whatever it is you are working on or thinking about. https://www.productcampstlouis.org/ They haven't published...

One of my favorite events on the St. Louis calendar is ProductCamp St. Louis. I think my first year attending was 2014, and I've managed to make it most years since (pandemic shutdown notwithstanding). And one of my favorite things about ProductCamp is that it is an "unconference." Sessions are proposed by attendees, the proposals are ...

Sometimes you just need a cute photo of some big dogs posing just in case someone comes along with a camera.

One of the fun things we get to do here in St. Louis is pay personal property tax for "tangible goods." For most of us, this just means cars (trucks, etc), but it also covers boats, aircraft, and hangars not declared as real estate (?). In order to know what to bill us at the end of the year, the Department of Revenue has us each decla...

A friend shared this article about the trouble some systems have with people's names. The main example they use is the last name "Null", which is an obvious potentially problematic name for several reasons. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160325-the-names-that-break-computer-systems But not all names are tricky because they are ke...

It was time. The 2015 Jeep Willys had 140,000 miles on it, the check engine light was on (probably needed a new oil pump (which on a Wrangler is a potentially big deal)), and, well, it was just old. Didn't really meet our needs any longer. So Julie and I went shopping for a new(ish) car. Well, to be more precise, we went shopping for a...

One of the skills I've developed over the years is that of asking good questions. By far, though, the best, most important, most impactful question I ever asked was 37 years ago today. It is impossible to overstate the possibilities that opened up when she said yes. And oh the fun we've had exploring those possibilities.

I've been a fan, if that's the right word, of the writings and works of Douglas Hofstadter since I picked up my first copy of his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid at a garage sale in high school. More recently, his collaboration with Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, has ...