Greetings:

Here are odds and ends from who knows where? A random assortment of things I wanted to toss at your wall I think you’ll enjoy …

• “I don’t know if the pen is mightier than the sword, but the ink lasts longer!”
• “The things that count the most are hardest to count.”  (Believe these last two came from Adam Grant, so I hope I did him justice!)
• Christina Koch, one of the astronauts on the recent Artemis II mission around the moon, said, “You don’t see borders, you don’t see religious lines, you don’t see political boundaries. All you see is Earth and you see that we are way more alike than we are different.”
• The World Cup. I won’t touch ticket prices, transportation, FIFA or anything else, but I gotta say, this quadrennial event is a blast.  The early non-sporting highlight is the Samurai Blue Japanese fans cleaning up after their match against the Netherlands (2 – 2) as has become their tradition.  What a classy and cool act?!  Boy-oh-boy do I hope the early performance by the U.S. side doesn’t set up unrealistic expectations!
• I promise, this’ll make you smile/laugh – Without sharing too much detail, I recently had to have my ear canals cleaned.  The device my audiologist used to do this was called, you guessed it, The Earigator.

I’ve recently been reading a lot about how “experts” are the least likely resource to rely upon when genuine change or innovation is required.

Consider …

…What I thought was expertise was, in fact, well-practiced error.

… Expertise becomes a liability when problems require us to rethink assumptions, shift values and learn our way forward.

… We’ve built cultures that prize certainty over curiosity and being right over being better!

… The deeper issue isn’t resistance to change; it’s resistance to loss.  Loss of competence, confidence and the ways that once reliably paved the way towards success.

… People who are most experienced, most educated and most accomplished are often the ones who struggle most when the terrain changes.  It’s not because they lack experience.  It’s because their experience has convinced them their expertise is enough.

… (Recurring theme here) In order to find new paths forward, we must listen more deeply, especially to those voices which challenge our assumptions.  (These last six points distilled from an excellent article by Tod Bolsinger)

And, finally, retail is alive and well at the Nebraska Furniture Mart!

We recently had to replace a side chair with the goal of doing so as inexpensively as possible.  Though we’d never been there, we ventured out to far North Dallas and were blown away by this retail experience.  Not only did we have plenty of options, but the scale of the showroom (560,000 square feet, triple that with the warehouse and 4,800 parking spaces!) and the thoughtfulness of the pickup process still boggle.

To get to the pickup dock at the back of the massive store, one scanned their sales receipt (or entered an order # from your car) at one of 20 or so kiosks (see photo) and was then directed to one of the 30 or so covered “stalls” to load their purchase.  Even though the warehouse was a HALF mile away, we got our chair two minutes after parking.

BTW, these stores are part of the Berkshire-Hathaway family, so no specific revenue totals are available, but this unit was projected to be a $600,000,000 business!

Hard not to be impressed!

Now, impress me with your thoughtful, articulate and pithy replies!  I triple dog dare you!