Whether you’re a hobbyist sketching out ideas, a student learning design, or a professional experimenting with new concepts, having the right tools can make all the difference. Yet, I know that not every designer has the budget for expensive software.
Whether you’re a hobbyist sketching out ideas, a student learning design, or a professional experimenting with new concepts, having the right tools can make all the difference. Yet, I know that not every designer has the budget for expensive software.
Christmas 2025.
Too many sales teams mistake activity for improvement. They record calls, run training sessions, and track metrics, yet performance plateaus. The problem isn’t effort; it’s ineffective coaching.
Not just similar. Cavendish bananas (the usual kind here in the US) are all clones, each from a tree grafted from a tree grafted, all the way back, from the first tree of the species in the UK.
There are problems with this.
Sure, the banana is the most reliable fruit. The banana marketing folks don’t have to worry about uniformity.
But the monoculture is fragile. When the virus that kills this species spreads, they’ll all disappear.
And there’s little room for innovation, for positioning or to be anything more than a commodity provider. It’s hard to tell a story about a better banana when bananas are all so obviously the same.
My best advice is to avoid being a banana farmer.
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
Two of the most popular Christmas Songs (aside from Mariah Carey’s cloying All I Want for Christmas Is You) are I’ll Be Home for Christmas (Kim Gannon, Walter Kent, Buck Ram) from 1943, introduced by Bing Crosby; and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane) introduced by Judy Garland in 1943, also. Frank Sinatra later recorded the canonical version of each of them.
The year 1943 was in the middle of World War II. These songs, unrealized by many who hear them today and unaware of the origins, are not sincere expressions of happiness of holidays spent together. They are lamentations, expressing a wish to return home to the safety and comforts and love of family. They were meant to represent the soldiers in the Pacific and in Europe who lived in horrible conditions, faced the possibility of death daily, were often ill, too cold, too hot, and too lonely.
The lyrics such as “Christmas Eve will find me, where the love light gleams, I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams,” and “We’ll all be together again if the fates allow, but until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” (later “lightened” to “Hang the Brightest Star Upon the Highest Bough”) convey the intense nostalgia for better times.
Think about that background as you consider Christmas this year. We still have soldiers away from home, in harm’s way, separated from their loved ones. We’re fortunate to have them, and we’re fortunate for our freedoms and liberty.
Merry Christmas!
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
Not just similar. Cavendish bananas (the usual kind here in the US) are all clones, each from a tree grafted from a tree grafted, all the way back, from the first tree of the species in the UK.
There are problems with this.
Sure, the banana is the most reliable fruit. The banana marketing folks don’t have to worry about uniformity.
But the monoculture is fragile. When the virus that kills this species spreads, they’ll all disappear.
And there’s little room for innovation, for positioning or to be anything more than a commodity provider. It’s hard to tell a story about a better banana when bananas are all so obviously the same.
My best advice is to avoid being a banana farmer.
Too many sales teams mistake activity for improvement. They record calls, run training sessions, and track metrics, yet performance plateaus. The problem isn’t effort; it’s ineffective coaching.
Too many sales teams mistake activity for improvement. They record calls, run training sessions, and track metrics, yet performance plateaus. The problem isn’t effort; it’s ineffective coaching.
