Uber recently reorganized its entire marketing team. After letting go of its first CMO alongside a group of other senior executives, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi laid off 400 people from their marketing department, representing one-third of the employees with marketing responsibilities. I feel for those laid off, as I think a lack of understanding of exactly what marketing is and how it is best practiced often makes marketers easy…

There is a lot of noise made about the end of retail.  How Amazon and the digital world will put an end to the need for traditional retailers.  While there is no doubt the retail landscape is inexorably being altered by digital, is it possible that understanding digital will make us better retailers?  Let’s discuss…

We all have two options when things get hard.  We can bring people closer and depend on them or we can push them away.  Self-preservation often leads people to isolate and protect themselves.  We do this to cut off negative stressors and threats, but in the process we also eliminate the positive inputs and opportunity. …

Someone once told me that I had big desire.  I was proud. It was a compliment.  I want to accomplish a lot, see a lot, do a lot, and have a lot.  Therefore I am ambitious.  Does that mean I am unhappy with what I have?  That I am unhappy in the moment?  Technically it…

Humans are tribal beings.  We organize ourselves in groups.  These groups include families, companies, sports teams, and many other assemblages.  From a young age we tend to take on roles within these groups.  Some people are leaders, some are followers, some are rebellious, some silently seethe, and others spend their days loudly celebrating the success…

My preconceptions about the elderly went out the window four years ago, when a woman in her early-80s came to me seeking pastoral care. She had been widowed for several years, but her distress didn’t come from the loss of her husband. Instead, it was because she had fallen in love with a married man…

There is a famous quote from Henry Ford about the invention of the automobile: “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  Ford’s point was later reinforced by Steve Jobs, who remarked, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they…

Innovation is a top priority for almost every organization. But to achieve success through innovation, companies must put as much energy and investment into marketing new offerings as they do in generating them. The role of marketing in some companies seems to have diminished in recent years, with the growth of artificial intelligence-driven algorithms and…

Happiness expert Paul Dolan, a professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics, recently released a report saying, among other things, that you will be happier and healthier if you don’t have kids.  Dolan points to women who are single with no kids as the happiest subgroup in modern society.  While his findings…

I turned forty yesterday.  I was born on June 15th in the last year of the 1970s, in North Shore Hospital in Great Neck, New York. Since then, life has generally been good to me—or at least that’s what my optimism tells me as I consider my past and present. I have a beautiful family. …