A significant high percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs go by nicknames. This is readily apparent, when you rattle off the most prominent ones like Jeff Immelt, Steve Balmer, Tim Cook, Jamie Dimon, Meg Whitman, etc. I believe that short names are potentially correlated with leadership success for the simple reason that they engender close association and camaraderie.  And that especially [...]

My daughter carries a Hello Kitty stuffed animal everywhere she goes. One day we were heading to lunch and I asked her, “What’s Hello Kitty going to have for lunch?” To which my 3 year old daughter responded, “Daddy, Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth. She can’t eat.” This is kind of sad for Hello Kitty but as far as [...]

Jill and I took the kids I Disney World this past weekend. I proudly began my career as a Disney Imagineer intern, so the parks hold a very special place for me. Walt was also my entrepreneurial hero long before any other, and I think shaped my view that great entrepreneurs were creatives and the power of ideas. They’re building [...]

Expensive clothing is just a bad deal.  Inevitably the clothing gets stained, shrunk, or lost before it’s high-quality extended use-life.  With that said, stylish and expensive are not one in the same.  I’ve recently discovered Uniqlo and Joe Fresh. Both of these chain clothing store just opened up all across Manhattan ,offering cheap and stylish clothing.  I bought $9.90 jeans [...]

Last night, I attended an event honoring Dr. Andrew Rosenberg, Chief of the Department of Anesthesiology at the Hospital for Joint Disease.  He talked the importance of teaching fellow anesthesiologists to fish rather than giving them fish – the old proverb.  Specifically, he mentioned a case of a doctor coming up to him at a conference, explaining that she had [...]

There are two professions that I keep in mind when working with clients: home decoration and medicine. When you’re hired as a decorator the client trusts and values your judgement, or else they wouldn’t have hired you, but ultimately it’s their home. The decorator needs to advise and recommend, but also respect that the client is the one paying and [...]

Jill gave this amazing interview to The Forward I couldn’t be more proud to call her my wife.  She discusses her deeply personal choices in an effort to get out the word about the importance of BRCA1 testing for high risk women, such as herself.  I’ve blogged about this before and so has Jill, but the video is beautifully shot and [...]

I hadn’t traveled to Europe in a few years prior to the business trip I returned from yesterday.  I was concerned that the time change, being 6 hours ahead of New York, would result in me being totally behind.  This was fortunately not the case.  For those on a managers schedule, there is a need to exist in two worlds, [...]

I finished reading the Madoff book this week.  I was struck by how many times over the years, Madoff would have been caught, had a regulator just followed up with a source or made a phone call.  Single phone calls would have shown that Madoff was holding no securities on behalf of his ponzi scheme victims.  In many cases, regulators [...]

I often ask interview candidates how they spend their days. I do this because I find it hard to evaluate the role people can play in a startup in the absence of concrete functions and tasks.  Saying you do “strategy,” “sales,” “business development,” or “work with clients” is hard for me to get my head around. I want to hear [...]