This weekend, we will see billions of dollars in media time, politician time, Homeland Security time, Pentagon time, NFL time, and the cost of our collective attention, spent on remembering 9/11. Most of it will be the 'Never Forget, Never Forgive' kind of remembering. We can already hear...

Cenk Uygur has a tree in his head.

I am currently studying the world-shaking work on storytelling in organizations by Dr. David Boje, who teaches at the College of Business at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M.

In the draft manuscript for his...

In a cosmetic sense, I agree with some of some of what Drew Westen wrote in his widely-circulated New York Times piece this week about President (vs. Candidate) Obama's 'passionless' storytelling since getting elected. Westen's essay, however, has one glaring omission that pretty much neuters his entire argument,...

To understand the leadership style modeled by President Obama, it helps to look at it through the lens of improvisation. Not improvisation as in Second City comedy, or 'making it up as we go along.' Improvisation as collaborative problem solving. Like jazz. Questing after the music that only our combined...

Dear Children,

I know you are busy with your lives and your careers and such, and you know I'm not one to meddle or nag. Live and let live, that's my motto. But as your Mother I've got to tell you that your behavior lately has...

A business narrative, like a theater performance, consists of a series of scenes. These scenes can often go on for extended periods of time, and take place concurrently (Operations) intermittently (Reviews) or asynchronously (Help Desk). They always have an audience. The audience can be 'internal' (inside the company),...

Wael Ghonim, Google's marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa, had been held captive by the Egyptian government for 12 days. Recently released, he has been doing interviews describing what's going on his country in which he describes it as an internet revolution, 'Revolution 2.0' is the name...

T.H. Culhane rocks the Middle East like no one else I know. I mean he literally rocks the Middle East. A few years ago, on a U.S. State Dept.-sponsored tour, he road-tripped through Egypt and other Middle East countries with Solar Circus, a rock band formed by his brother Michael...

This photo, featured on the 11.30.10 HuffPost landing page, is one of my favorite politically-themed photos of the year. It depicts a perfect little scene. Whoever took it for Getty Images deserves a prize. Its composition is precise, balanced and economical. In terms of...

It's human nature to name things, so we had to come up with a name for what we turned around one day and discovered everyone else doing -- Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing, Digging, Etsying, You-Name-It-ing, basically platforming the hell out of the internet as a way to participate in the new...

An analysis of Andrew Breitbart's game, after his talk at the METal (Media, Entertainment & Technology Alliance) breakfast this past August in Marina Del Rey, California...

Impressively balancing a thick databook on a chunky thigh while half-sitting on a barstool, Breitbart waves his hands a lot when he talks. He's...

In tangling with a subject that's loco, one runs the risk of going loco oneself. It's probably why I've been struggling with this post, to the point of being driven crazy by it, for a week. Here we go, this time for sure, hoping that some semblance of sanity awaits...

This is an analysis of the Afghanistan War through the lens of improvisation. (The analysis is further informed by conversations with Afghan and American journalists, social entrepreneurs working in Afghanistan, members of the American military who have fought on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both, and, in some cases,...

Here's the quote by Tony "Relatively Tiny" Hayward, the CEO of BP about the mess it has made of the Gulf of Mexico from a story on May 13th in the Guardian that's getting cited all over the interwebs"

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very...

This is an important distinction for brands to make:

Say goodbye to consumers.

Create customers instead.

Here's why:

Consumption is so last century. Consumer-oriented brands' only meaningful metric is how much merch they move, and consumers tie their status to how much of a scarce resource they...

EXT. HOLLYWOOD - DAY

This week, a consortium led by The Hollywood Sign Trust, the Trust for Public Land, and Los Angeles councilman Tom LaBonge announced plans to purchase a 138-acre parcel of land near the city's world-famous Hollywood Sign to preserve it as green space. The...

If if you've never seen it, you ought to. The British Parliament's 'Prime Minister's Question Time' is brilliant political theater. Below is a video so you can watch some of this:

Now,...

A story gets retold (or spun) from the perspective of history, but the story itself forms in the present. You cannot look forward and say with any authority that a product is going to change the game, you can only look back over time and determine that it has.

I am at our local hardware store on Vermont Avenue in L.A. where I've recently been spending a lot of time and money on our fixer-upper, when I see one of the store's employees give another one a pat on the back. It makes me smile because it's something I...