Whether we are talking about societies, cultures, economies, organizations or inter-personal relationships, the dynamics of social power receive a great deal of attention. Our interest in social power is not surprising. Since human existence is largely and perhaps even essentially social in nature, our power to influence each other’s behavior has significant implications for all […]

Behavioral economics research suggests that people can be divided roughly into three categories:  homo economicus, homo recipricans, and homo communicus. “Studies from behavioral economics suggest that about 20%–30% of people are purely selfish by nature, like H. economicus; about 50% are conditional cooperators (H. reciprocans); and about 20%–30% are very prosocial (H. communicus).” (p. 250 of Ecological Economics, Principles and Applications by […]

As noted in the post Individualism is also a relationship, I have long been curious about whether our common sense understanding of the individual as something fundamentally set apart from the rest of the world provides an accurate sense of our actual existence. Does the sense of being a separate entity cloak a more fundamental […]

I was sad to hear about the recent passing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He was gracious enough to make time to chat with me about his research on flow when I made a visit to Claremont, CA in the late 2000s. At the time I was working on a suite of cultural transformation initiatives at a major IT […]

What does it mean to be an individual? The answer to this question may seem fairly straightforward. We tend to assume that to be an individual is to be one person (in some sense) set apart from the rest of the world. Starting from this assumption, we then consider how that one person set apart […]

The endless hours I’ve spent sitting in front of my computer over the past 18 months have afforded me an opportunity to reflect on the nature of human connection. Working remotely is not a new thing for me. Like many of my collaborators, I have been working remotely from my home and other locations for […]

Do you regularly log 10 to 12 hours of work per day? How about weekends and holidays? “Of course,” you say, “Who doesn’t?” And vacation, what is that? For several decades, professionals have been caught up in a trend toward ever-increasing performance pressure accompanied by ever-lengthening work days. But if you think all of that […]

In the real world, the problems we face can be roughly divided into two categories. Some are tame. Tame problems are simple and easy to analyze and categorize. Figuring out how to use an Excel function to perform a calculation is a tame problem. It may look hard, but it is actually pretty straightforward. Overcoming tame […]

You do a lot of what you do without ever thinking about it. With a little reflection you’ll notice that you are not always sure what leads you to do some of the things that you do. Most of us have unconscious habits like a nervous laugh or finger tapping. Then there are those extra […]