From the Author
I’m a blissfully married man, father of three, business consultant, author, frequent swinger of hammers, occasional drinker of good whisky, and the kind of pragmatist who is forever agitated by people who seek affirmation, not truth.
Wisdom is big topic, traditionally approached from philosophical and theological perspectives. Fair enough. But my approach is more business-like- decidedly logical, practical, and creative. No doubt that stems from my background as a business leader and consultant who is always looking for the aha! moment that enlightens the right approach to a problem or opportunity. I was Partner in an award-winning marketing communications firm, head of product for a successful, large-scale online start-up in medicine, and held executive roles within big, scholarly publishers creating information tools for doctors. I have served as consultant on over 100 business initiatives for clients in search of answers and have trained over 1,000 Product Managers whose core job it is to find the truth of market needs. Quite a lot of pragmatic aha! moments have been generated along the way.
Such pragmatic aha! moments are the nature of wisdom- the ability to use what you’ve learned from experience, story, and example to anticipate where things are going in a given situation, then develop actions that take advantage of positive directions or mitigate negative ones. Certainly, wisdom in the domain of business is a powerful asset. But the essential wisdom that applies across the spectrum of life is no mere asset- it is life transforming.
So, ever since publication of my business book: The 21 Inevitable, Indelible, Inviolate, Indomitable, Ingenious Rules of B2B Marketing, I’ve been thinking about how to bring a similarly idiosyncratic approach to conveying aha! insights about everyday life- something that could distill essential wisdom into some digestible bites that are both relevant to today’s swirling chaos and actionable. Dorothy’s journey over the rainbow, as told in The Wizard of Oz, offered the right metaphor for a quest to contrast today’s fanciful, foolish notions to the pragmatic wisdom one might expect to find in the Kansas heartland.
When monkeys fly you’ve got to be a pragmatist.
