A friend of mine recently pointed me to an interesting article by Rick Cattell, distinguished engineer at Sun microsystems. I had never heard of Rick but he sounds knowledgeable and had good insights to share in a couple of different areas: successful companies, technical innovation, successful products and career issues, all of which are like crack-cocaine to me because, well, I am very interested in these topics. My thoughts on some of these:   1. [...]

This is part of the ‘Lessons in Persuasion’ series. Each post is a concise blurb on how you can be more persuasive in your interactions with people. If you have any thoughts to share, please leave a comment or response below – or contact me.   In the last post we saw that Social Proof can have a profound effect in helping increase your persuasiveness . It’s a known fact that human beings are social animals, and [...]

This is part of the ‘Lessons in Persuasion’ series. Each post is a concise blurb on how you can be more persuasive in your interactions with people. If you have any thoughts to share, please leave a comment or response below – or contact me.   Other’s people behavior is a powerful source of social influence, and has a strong effect on the actions we take and decisions we make, whether we like to admit it or [...]

This is part of the ‘Persuasion’ series. Each post is a concise blurb on how you can be more persuasive in your interactions with people, and it’s taken from stuff I’ve learned + read. If you have any thoughts to share, please leave a comment or response below – or contact me.     “That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value.” -Thomas Paine [...]

I decided a while back that I wanted to teach myself how to become more persuasive. The benefits don’t need to be stated – being more persuasive can help you at work and in your personal life. Need to convince your interviewer to give you the job? Need to convince your spouse to take that vacation you’ve been wanting so bad? Need to motivate your employees to put in extra time to get a project you really [...]

This is part 2 of a series of posts on persistence being a key factor to success. In my previous post we went over the Matthew Effect and how you can make use of it to win an edge over your competition and peers (In short, knowing how to capitalize on an initial edge and play to your strengths can make a huge difference. That said, nothing comes without effort, you have to work for it). In [...]

The term Matthew Effect was first coined by Robert K. Merton, a Genius sociologist of Columbia, and it takes it’s name from the Biblical gospel of Matthew: For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. —Matthew 25:29, New Revised Standard Version.   The Matthew Effect is the notion that a small initial difference [...]