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There is much ado about the use of pronouns in today’s society and business environments. Regardless of your preferences elsewhere the one you have to learn to embrace when venturing into the use of AI is the pronoun “We”. “WE” engenders many responses from boomers. Are you talking (or typing) to a person? The AI will make every attempt possible to convince you that you are. It will be chummy, funny, sensitive, reflective, thoughtful, and considerate with you in respon

Every quarter, executive teams gather to review the health of their business or organization. Revenue. Margins. Cash flow. Sales pipeline. Customer satisfaction. Operational performance. These dashboards are indispensable. They tell us whether we are winning. But they all have one thing in common. They tell us what has already happened. After spending more than three decades helping organizations build strategic partnerships, integrate acquisitions, and lead transformat

One of the first questions you have to resolve when engaging your AI is whether it is better to talk or to type. As Shakespeare penned, THAT is the question. I have some practical suggestions, but first I cannot resist a farce on Hamlet's famous soliloquy from Act III, Scene 1. To talk or type. That is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of slow hunt and peck, Or to take arms against a sea of autocorrect And by talking aloud e

Organizations enter partnerships, mergers and acquisitions with enthusiastic executive optimism. They fail with frustrated executive confusion. The business case was compelling. The market opportunity was significant. The strategic rationale appeared sound. Yet 18 months to 3 years later, the relationship has become more distraction than success. What happened? After participating in more than 140 strategic alliances and the integrating nearly 100 acquisitions across public

My name is James and I’m a boomer. Why should someone like me, who is an accomplished business executive, lifelong learner, and even has a computer science degree feel like he needs to open up his journey into AI as if I am introducing myself at an AA meeting? Part of me just doesn’t want to put in the effort to learn yet another technology just enough so that, technically speaking, I sound like a high schooler with one semester of Spanish visiting somewhere in Latin Ameri

OG Anunoby makes game winning shot following basics of going to the rim (Vincent Carchietta/Imagn/Reuiters) The shooting skill, size, height, and speed of today’s NBA players is unworldly. However, ultimately what won this game was doing the basics, while losing the game was due to ignoring them. The first 5 seconds of this video says it all. OG Anunoby inbounded the pass. Nobody guarded him. (Spurs fail in the basics) He went right to the rim! (basics done). Knicks

Knowing when to exit a relationship matters How long is enough before you press the button to exit on a failed strategic partnership, alliance, merger or acquisition? The best answer is “as soon as possible”. However, most executives wait until the pain of trying to make it work is just too much to bear. That is always too late and the results can be disastrous. Failed partnerships and alliances typically take 18 months to reach this point. Failed mergers and acquisitions,

The journey of a startup is often described as a space odyssey often ending in disaster and sometimes in exultant triumph. Ten percent of all startups fail within the first year, with a cumulative twenty percent by end of year two and ninety percent failing by end of year five. For those who make it into year six and beyond, only a third of those with VC backing that have made it through a Series C reach a successful exit. Startups who reach an exit are five to ten times

No, this post is not about ancient dragons nor is this a about preventing nuclear war. However, when there is a five-year gap between blog posts, it begs an explanation. Allow me one paragraph as segue and then my explanation follows. Back in the day, I taught networking technology at Kennedy Space Center. I was introducing what was then cutting-edge digital tech to people who had landed men on the moon using mostly analog tech and slide rules. That led me to an adventure i

Alice and Vint never dated and do not have a marriage certificate. Yet, they are inexorably linked to each other in a confused cloud created by the Supreme Court that has negatively impacted the ability to obtain an enforceable patent for a computer program or software. The implications to FinTech, Saas, and IoT are far reaching. This 3-part article takes a look at the impact of the Supreme Court on IP over the last 5 years and how your company’s intellectual property can b

Culture is the foundation on which Mission is executed and Vision is realized. However, “culture” is not a noun. Culture is a verb. Three John’s, John Nordstrom, John Morgridge and John Chambers, CEO/Chairman rock stars in their industries, taught this lesson the same way. They lived it out in front of their people. Two showed me how. John Nordstrom is legendary for instilling the culture of customer service. Books have literally been written on such while countless stori

What made this a spectacular PR event, which @apexmarketing indicates was worth $7.2M in free promotion for Bud Light, was not the power of an Astros home run hitting the stomach of a Bud Light and Nationals fan. It was the power of social media being harnessed by an empowered employee at the edge of the Bud Light organization. See the full clip here: https://loom.bz/BudLight_Empowered_Employee Such heads up play by a PR savvy social media hawk at Bud Light really turned thi

The (in)famous Three Mile Island site is scheduled to close on Friday, Sept 30th. Have you ever thought about what the corporate...

There are so many stories of great losses and great heroes from 9/11/2001. Living in DC and being the VP of Global Govt. Solutions for Cisco Systems at that time, I lost neighbors, co-workers, and valued friends and associates both at the Pentagon and in New York on 9/11. As for my team the call received that fateful morning was from Richard Clarke, then the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism reporting to the President of th

There are times when we reset and refresh in order to be prepared for the challenges and opportunities ahead. I have found the week between the Christmas and New Year's holidays are a good time, as well as, the morning of the 4th of July. These bi-annual way points allow for resetting the desk, the desktop, and those things that tend to creep into the way of what is important. This year, Loom Enterprises has refreshed its web site with the traditional end of summer and sta