success

An Appreciation of “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson”

As a Stephen Colbert fan, I was very happy to learn that Colbert will be the new host of The Late Show with David Letterman when Letterman retires in 2015. However, I was considerably less happy to learn that Craig Ferguson – who once was rumoured to be next in line for the hosting job on Letterman’s show – will be leaving The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in December of this year. (Apparently he has a new gig as a game show host starting this fall.)

I am a big fan of Ferguson and of The Late Late Show. And so is John Doyle, the TV critic for Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper. Doyle wrote a column that pretty much nails all the reasons why Ferguson is such a great host.  (more…)

Blog Carnival: My Post-Ph.D. Story

Jacquelyn Gill over at The Contemplative Mammoth blog has put forward a great idea for the month of May: a “Post-Ph.D. Blog Carnival”,  for bloggers to tell their stories of what they did after finishing their Ph.D. degrees. As she notes, there are, and will be, a lot of stories of people leaving academia in disgust or disillusionment after completing a Ph.D.. But there are also stories of people who stayed, and there’s value in learning about wherever Ph.D. graduates end up. I’m one of those who stayed in academia, and this is my post-Ph.D. story.

To understand my post-Ph.D.story, you have to understand the context of the story. I’m proud to (more…)

The Case(s) of the Misrepresented Women

Case studies are a common feature of the curriculum in most post-secondary business programs. They’re valuable teaching tools, but they’re  tricky to choose, because a case that’s too difficult or too easy, or too long or too short, can be a failure in the classroom. So I am probably not the only instructor who, when choosing a case, looks at things like how well the case fits with the subject for that class or course, whether the case can be done by an individual student or would work better with a team, or whether solving the case situation requires some serious thought and analysis. In other words, I usually don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the implicit assumptions underlying the case.

So that’s why I was both excited and also somewhat embarrassed to see the results of a new study that (more…)

Dismantling the Creative Routine

Around this time last year,  Thomas Frank put forward some very pointed and accurate criticisms of the popular literature about creativity – namely, that these books and articles discussed the same examples over and over again – and wondered how much this literature could really enlighten us about creativity when it was so un-creative itself.

Now an article in Pacific Standard magazine has similarly critical things to say about another frequently discussed aspect of creativity – the “creative routine”. This, we are told, (more…)

On Commencement, and Moving Forward

In my work, it’s the time of year on campus when things are gearing up for graduation. I’ve sat through graduation ceremonies as a graduating student and as a faculty member, and I have some painful memories of very tedious, long-winded speakers who spouted cliche after cliche. But I’ve also been privileged to hear great speakers like author Antonine Maillet; at the ceremony where I received my MBA, she gave a beautiful address that was like being told an enchanting tale about the power and magic of books.

Stephen Colbert isn’t graduating from university this year, but, (more…)

What Skating Judging can Learn from Workplace Performance Evaluation

At every Winter Olympics, it seems, there are complaints about figure skating judging. Occasionally those complaints lead to something more – as in 2002, when a second gold medal was awarded in the pairs event because of alleged bias in the judging. But usually the complaints are along the lines of “The judging was unfair because my favourite skater lost”, or “The judging was unfair because I didn’t understand it” – that second one often coming from sportswriters and commentators who don’t regularly follow figure skating, or who can’t be bothered to learn how the judging system works.

At the 2014 Sochi Olympics, there were complaints about the judging in every one of the figure skating events, including allegations of fixed results in at least two of the events.  The purpose of this post isn’t to argue about those results. Instead, I want to look at the judging system itself, and analyze it using the model of an effective workplace performance evaluation system. I’m using this model for two reasons: (more…)

Some Thoughts on Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath”

At last I got to the top of my public library’s waitlist for Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – so I finally had the chance this week to read the entire book.

The impression that I came away with was: this is not a good book.

It starts out promisingly by using the story of David and Goliath to introduce the idea of the triumph of the underdog. However, (more…)

Stephen Colbert on Finding Joy in Your Work

The best five minutes of television in 2013 happened on August 7, when The Colbert Report aired a video of Stephen Colbert and “friends” dancing to Daft Punk’s song Get Lucky. Daft Punk had originally been scheduled to appear on the show in person – but they were also booked for the MTV Video Music Awards a few days later, and because of that MTV insisted that they not appear on Colbert’s show. So when Daft Punk cancelled, the video was quickly created to fill the sudden gap in the show’s schedule.

Because the video clearly involved considerable planning and effort, there was some skepticism after the broadcast about whether Colbert had actually made the video a few days earlier and then made up the cancellation story to get more attention for the video. In this podcast, hosted by comedian Paul Mecurio, Colbert gives a very thorough explanation of how the video came to be – which, as it turns out, is a rather complex story, involving what Daft Punk was and wasn’t willing to do, clashing corporate interests, and a lot of quick changes of strategy.

What struck me most about this interview (more…)

Caring, Not Caring, And Success

I’ve just finished reading David Epstein’s excellent book The Sports Gene, a fascinating exploration of the research on genetic and physiological factors that may contribute to exceptional athletic performance. Ironically, I got the book only a few weeks before I saw the fascinating Alex Gibney documentary The Armstrong Lie, which was intended to be about Lance Armstrong‘s 2009 return to competitive cycling in the Tour de France, but instead ended up being about Armstrong’s secret use of performance-enhancing drugs. Clearly anyone who takes PEDs is trying to gain a physiological advantage in competition, but watching Armstrong’s behaviour in the film made me wonder about another factor in exceptional athletic performance: (more…)

The Joy of Figures

Over the past two weeks, the international competitive ice skating season has started, with the Skate America competition in Detroit and the Skate Canada competition in Saint John. In most countries, the local and regional competitions leading to national championships are also underway – and all these events are more intensely competitive than usual because of the upcoming 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. But I’m going to talk about a part of skating that sadly disappeared from (more…)