Blogs on Writing
Ten Bookstores Worth Traveling For
Check out this recent piece from The Discoverer Blog. I've been to only one of these great bookstores, Shakespeare and Company, but the others are now on my bucket list of must-visit...
My Favorite DEAD BECKONING Instagrammers
Many thanks to Eliza and Tiffany, two of my favorite Instagrammers, for their reviews of DEAD BECKONING.https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd3yT8fptsL/https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd-9kCQOzMF/
Two Great Women Who Rocked America in ’62
Here is a great article from Literary Hub about Rachel Carson and Jane Jacobs, both of whom published seminal books in 1962. I hope you enjoy it. Direct link to the blog https://lithub.com/rachel-carson-jane-jacobs-and-the-tumultuous-summer-of-1962/ Rachel...
Chris Cooper has a wonderful blog called Inside the Emotion of Fiction. She featured me recently. I thought you might enjoy it.
Chris Cooper has a wonderful blog called Inside the Emotion of Fiction. She featured me recently. I thought you might enjoy it. 290 Inside the Emotion of Fiction DEAD BECKONING by Mike Cobb. What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing DEAD BECKONING on June 27, 2019. However, given that this is a work of historical fiction, I spent a couple of years doing extensive research before “putting pen to paper” (metaphorically…see below). I completed the work on January 11, 2021.
HOME AWAY FROM HOME, a story from The Biltmore House
HOME AWAY FROM HOME, a story from The Biltmore House Those of you who know me well know that I live part-time in midtown Atlanta in a ninety-eight year old building called The Biltmore House. For most of its illustrious history, it was part of The Biltmore Hotel and...
DEAD BECKONING Book Signing – April 30th – Book Bound Bookstore
I am delighted and honored to announce that I will be signing copies of DEAD BECKONING at Book Bound Bookstore in Blairsville, GA, from 1 to 3 pm on Saturday, April 30th. https://bookboundbooks.com/ If you’re in the area, please stop by in celebration of...
C.S. Lewis said “You’re never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
Here’s a great article on Literary Hub’s site by Kathleen Stone on writers who debuted after the age of sixty. I hope you enjoy it. Kathleen Stone is a writer whose debut, They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men, is out now from Cynren Press.
[A] writer is someone who pays attention to the world
Four great pieces from past issues of The Paris Review, one of my favorite literary magazines. Enjoy!
When Edward Hirsch spoke to Susan Sontag, in between her trips to Sarajevo, for a 1995 Art of Fiction interview, he noted that her work seemed “haunted by war.” She said, “I could answer that a writer is someone who pays attention to the world.” This week, we’re rereading a poem by Claribel Alegria and a story by Nadine Gordimer, looking back at a portfolio of the writer Ryszard Kapuściński’s photographs, watching the news, and considering what it means to pay attention.
To Kill a Mockingbird? Really? The Handmaid’s Tale? Maus?
"Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight." Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower When will it end? Book banning is back. Texas State Representative Matt...
Are Screens Robbing Us of Our Capacity for Deep Reading?
Call me old-school, but I'll take a good, old-fashioned print book over an ebook any day. Yes, I own a Kindle. And yes, I use it on occasion, especially when traveling (which I've done little of since the beginning of COVID). But I will always prefer print. Here's a...
The only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf
As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. This is the only known recording in existence of Virginia Woolf. By Fiona Macdonald Seventy-five years have passed since the British writer died. To mark the anniversary, we commissioned...
We Will Always Need Virginia Woolf
Here’s a great piece by Emma Knight on the legacy of a literary icon, Virginia Woolf. Knight wrote this piece on the 140th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s birth, January 25th. We Will Always Need Virginia Woolf Check it out.
From Literary Hub:
Sara Davidson on the Ten Lessons She Learned about Writing Hanging Out with Joan Didion As a big Joan Didion fan, I enjoyed this piece. https://lithub.com/hanging-out-with-joan-didion-what-i-learned-about-writing-from-an-american-master/ I arranged to meet Joan Didion...
A Word of Caution: What are Political Correctness and Cancel Culture Doing to Fiction?
Mike Cobb Dead Beckoning, my historical novel based on an 1895 cold case murder in Atlanta, is due to be released this fall. In the front of the book, sandwiched between the Cast of Characters and the Introduction, is a Word of Caution: In a work of historical...
Writing – and reading – like a scientist
Thinking like a detective I recently read an article in Psyche, the digital magazine from Aeon, titled How to think like a detective. The article caught my attention because, as a writer of true crime and crime fiction, I understand the importance of employing the...
Our Most Effective Weapon is Imagination
Last year, I wrote a piece called The Prince of Paradox and the Light-Beam Rider in which I discussed the power of awe and wonder. One of the two key players in this piece is Albert Einstein, the preeminent scientist who understood that “He who can no longer pause to...
One True Sentence
To get started, write one true sentence. My wife and I have been watching the documentary on Ernest Hemingway by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Hemingway did his best work very early in the morning. While I would never...
How to create compelling characters
An interesting take on developing fictional characters that are believable, engaging and compelling. In my opinion, great character-driven fiction requires empathy and curiosity.
Mass, Energy, and How Literature Transforms the Dead Weight of Being: Jeanette Winterson on Why We Read
Here’s a nice piece on Why we Read from Maria Popova (Brain Pickings). I hope you enjoy it. “Books read us back to ourselves… The escape into another story reminds us that we too are another story. Not caught, not confined, not predestined.”
What We Get Wrong About Joan Didion
“…style is just the baseline of good writing. Didion’s innovation was something else.” Those who know me well know that I have been a fan of Joan Didion for years. This is a worthy read by Nathan Heller in The New Yorker.
The high-stakes world of pirate publishing
An interesting piece on pirate publishing by Andrew Pettegree, Professor of Modern History at the University of St. Andrews.
Mrs. Dalloway and Head-Hopping
Michael Cunningham is an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his 1998 Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Hours. The December 23, 2020 issue of The New York Times ran a wonderful essay
Dancing with my Characters
Mike Cobb My wife and I are huge fans of CBS Sunday Morning. It’s been our weekly morning ritual for years. I love the variety of stories, ranging from human interest to current events––a refreshing alternative to the barrage of political news invading from
I Write in Service to my Characters
Mike Cobb “Never allow the integrity of your own way of seeing things and saying things to be swamped by the influence of a master, however great.” George P. Lathrop George Parsons Lathrop. Ever
Nabokov and the Task of Writing
Okay. I admit it. The abiding controversy surrounding Lolita notwithstanding, I’m a huge fan of Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov.
Of his considerable body of work…..
Wabi-Sabi and the Craft of Writing
I don’t begin a piece, whether a short story or a novel, with some lofty notion of an ideal plotline that takes the reader through an exposition, a crescendo and a climax, a resolution and a denouement.
Blogs on Business
Purpose Revisited
Recently I received a Knowledge@Wharton article, “Should Leadership Feel More Like Love?.” It is an interview with Fred Kofman, Google leadership development advisor and former LinkedIn vice president of leadership…
Man vs Machine … Tim Cook Weighs In
Picture this. It’s a mild summer evening in San Francisco. It’s 2018. CEOs and thought leaders from across the country have gathered for the invitation-only Fortune CEO Initiative. The movers and shakers of Silicon Valley are there…
An 8-Year-Old Company Worth ($20 Billion) $35 Billion Is After Your Commissions
An earthquake is hitting the real estate industry. If you’re a commercial real estate broker – your world is going to be rocked like an off-the-chart earthquake!
What You See Is Not the Whole Story … Not Even Close
I really like this picture. I’m not sure of the provenance, but it has “the world needs to know this” written all over it…
Don’t be part of an $800 billion statistic!
In last week’s Something To Sleep On newsletter, I discussed the percentage of M&A transactions that fail. Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter…
What if you build it and no one comes?
What is the number one reason start-ups fail? Is it lack of cash? Is it pricing? Bad marketing? All of these factors, as well as many others, may play a role…
GE’s swift and dramatic corporate meltdown … and the failure of leadership
You may have read my recent articles here and here about the precipitous decline of General Electric.
Now comes an insightful article by Fortune Magazine Senior Editor at Large Geoff Colvin…
Who’s more profitable, Amazon or Macy’s?
If you said Amazon … think again. Macy’s operating margin exceeds 6%, while Amazon’s operating margin last quarter was only 3.8% …. but the comparison is even more striking if we look at Amazon’s numbers a little more closely…
Musk and Moats…A Brief Update
You may have seen my article earlier this week about the war of words between Warren Buffett and Elon Musk over disparate business philosophies. In that article I alluded to the fact that Musk’s investments…
Breaking News … Are we seeing the “beginning of the unraveling” of GE ?
Last week, in an article about GE and its apparent troubles, I asked if the company, “a household name for over a century, may be in the midst of a disruption that could irreparably challenge its market dominance.” Here we are, a mere five days later, and a couple of breaking news items this morning…
Musk and Moats … Is a Candy War in the Making?
I couldn’t help myself. I had to weigh in on this. I assume you’ve kept up to date on the war of words between Elon Musk and Warren Buffett of late. If not, you should check it out, . It’s amusing to say the least to see two multi-billionaires have at it over business strategy…
“Black Swan” Event Stops Ford F-150 Production In Its Tracks
“Black Swan” Event Stops Ford F-150 Production In Its Tracks
What happens when a fire at a parts factory disrupts a fragile supply chain and shuts down a major manufacturing operation? …
From “progress for people” to “hard times” … is a venerable American company being disrupted?
Some time ago I wrote an article about risk and innovation and the fall of Kodak. In that article I opined that the basis of Kodak’s failure to capitalize on its early momentum in digital photography lay in the fact that it went to great lengths not to cannibalize its core business…
If you have no skin in the game, should you be in the game?
Are you responsible for your own actions? Most people would say – of course!
But what happens if you’re free to make decisions, to take actions, without suffering the consequences? What does this do to the very meaning of responsibility…
Cacophony Revisited … And you thought Space Invaders was an arcade game from the 1980s.
I am becoming convinced that the advent of AI, or artificial intelligence, is responsible in large part for the cacophony that inundates us daily. Bots now make up more than half of all Internet traffic, according to…
Eight Keys to Establishing a Daily Routine
It might not be obvious to you, but I like to write. I may not be a great writer … but I think I’m reasonably good. And I write for myself as much as for anyone else. It helps me focus my thoughts and helps me center. As I learn from the process, it makes me a better…
From Chainsaw Al to Tony Hsieh … Where Do You Weigh In?
I recently saw a quote by Pixar founder Ed Catmull about Steve Jobs’ transformation as a leader after being “kicked out” of Apple and suffering setbacks at NeXT and Pixar…
When to Run from a Consultant
Back in October of last year, in an article about the importance of asking the right questions and not assuming that you have the answers, I recounted an experience in a Delta Sky Club where I witnessed a disturbing conversation…
How Would a 20% Increase in Productivity & Profitability Impact Your Company?
Employee engagement drives company performance. No surprise here, right? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the more engaged a company’s…
Food for Thought: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time
How often have you heard the phrase “he (or she) was just in the right place at the right time” when describing an opportunity? What does it mean to b…
Eight Things I would Tell my Graduate Student Self
A few months in an article called Would you rather have a Happy life or a Meaningful life?, I pointed out…
Changing Business Paradigms in the 21st Century
Never before have business leaders faced the challenges they face today. Rapidly changing markets, increased global competition, the furious race to attract and retain unparalleled talent, technological forces, the ever-inc…
Strategic Models and Frameworks – An Update
It cannot be said enough … in order to succeed in today’s world, astute business leaders understand the need for agile strategic thinking and…
Traditional Strategic Planning Models Don’t Work … There’s A Better Way
Traditional strategic planning models don’t work, certainly not in the rapidly changing world we live in today and, I would argue, fundamentally they nev…
Would You Rather Live a Happy Life or Meaningful Life?
I assume that most if not all of us would answer “I want both”. But what if you had to choose one or the other? Would you choose to be happy even if you had no clear, well-defined and committed purpose in life? Or would you choose instead to live a life of meaning even if it meant being miserable? A cogent argument…
Admitting That You Don’t Have the Answers…It’s Not Easy
What do you do if you overhear a conversation among strangers that is so egregious, that runs counter to your fundamental principles, that you have to speak up and say, “wait a minute…
Getting the Questions Right
Earlier this year I wrote a short piece called For Want of Wonder about curiosity, creativity and innovation. I was reminded of this when I picked up the November 2017 edition of The Atlantic and…
Buddha’s Brain Meditation Research Reports
Back in March I wrote an article, Amidst the Cacophony, that touched on the power of silent meditation and attending to the “soft, still voices that come from the depths” in an age of sensory overload. In that article I…
Attention is the Rarest and Purest Form of Generosity
While I have never been a big fan of LBJ, I have always found this quote both amusing and emblematic of his ability to accomplish his objectives by bringing his seeming…
Larry Jones the Horseman
J. Larry Jones has horse racing in his blood. From an early age he must have known he was destined to be a horseman, and a great one at that. Larry’s a horse trainer. A trainer…
Your Way, My Way or Our Way?
Back in the mid- to late-nineties I did a lot of work in South America. While in the throes of working through the terms of a business arrangement, my Colombian business partner made …
Calling – Will Your Work Leave a Legacy ??
A decade and a half ago, Jim Collins wrote Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. Most of us…
Amidst the Cacophony
While in graduate school, I would occasionally take the forty-five-minute drive to Conyers, Georgia, just…
Are You Ready to Transition Your Business?
Home About Services Blog Call: 12345678 Home About ServicesBlog COACHING PERSONAL & TEAM DEVELOPMENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT MASTERMIND GROUPS COACHING PERSONAL & TEAM DEVELOPMENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT MASTERMIND GROUPS Are you prepared to...
Leadership Development
We have been helping bring out the best in people for over thirty years. Our approach combines principles of neurosciences with…
Strategy Development and Execution
Prussian military strategist Helmuth von Moltke is credited with saying “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” While the military…
Workshops and Personal Development
Each of our highly experiential, participatory workshops is tailored to your specific needs and objectives. They typically extend over 2-5 days…
Rapid Solutions Deployment
As you prepare for inevitable change, how will you transform your organization to be competitively successful? How will you…
Executive Coaching and Mentoring
For decades we have provided one-on-one executive coaching and mentoring of individuals, ranging from seasoned business executives to tomorrow’s leaders. We provide a highly confidential environment that is conducive to personal development in the pursuit of...
Free the Radicals
Free The Radicals A friend recently sent me a link to a Chicago Ideas presentation by Alexa Clay, Leadership Lessons from King Pins, Hackers, Gangsters and Misfits. I highly recommend it. Ms. Clay’s talk deals with leadership lessons from black market innovators,...
For Want of Wonder
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, better known as G.K., once said: “We are perishing from want of wonder, not from want of wonders.” I think about this quote a lot. And when I think about it, it is in multiple contexts. I think about it theologically, as G.K. no doubt...
Google Perks Revisited
In March of last year I wrote an article entitled “Why Google hands out such lavish perks—It’s not just for the team” (https://mgcobb.com2016/03/16/why-google-hands-out-such-lavish-perks-its-not-just-for-the-team/) which di…
DIKW and Tribal Knowledge
In a recent article I touched on the role “tribal knowledge” plays in the decision-making process in many organizations (Do You Think It Or Do You Know It). Early in my career I had the opportunity to head up a product development group for a major chemical company....
Do you think it or do you know it?
Years ago I advised a CEO whose first question, whenever anyone came to him with a bold statement or seeming revelation related to the business was “Do you think it or do you know it?” He constantly challenged his leaders to test their assumptions. And as we walked...
William of Ockham has left the building
I sometimes wonder what William of Ockham would think if he were alive today. He was, if you recall, a Franciscan friar and philosopher who lived in the 14th century, and to whom the “law of parsimony” is attributed. Also known as Ockham’s Razor (or Occam’s Razor),...
Made in the USA
I recently read an article in CNNMoney [1] (Made in the USA is not Dead) about the manufacturing sector in the US and the fact that manufacturing is booming in this country, several sectors are producing record outputs and foreign companies are investing heavily in US...
Hanjin 3
A couple of weeks ago I posted a short article on how companies can prepare for and respond to supply chain disruptions (Hanjin Revisited). This was a follow-up to an earlier article on the Hanjin bankruptcy and its impact on businesses globally (Hanjin and Turmoil in...
Hanjin Revisited
September 30th. It’s been a month now since Hanjin Shipping filed for bankruptcy. So what has happened over the past month? A lot … but not enough. A little over a week into the chaos U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Sherwood granted the company provisional protection from...
Hanjin and Turmoil in the Shipping Industry … Should we have seen it coming?
On the last day of August, Hanjin Shipping, the world’s seventh largest container carrier, representing almost 8% of all of the United States trans-Pacific trade volume and 3% of global shipping capacity, filed for protection in South Korea’s bankruptcy courts and was...
Entrepreneurism and Free Markets
My professional life (if you don’t count selling Christmas cards door-to-door when I was a kid and, for a very short while, the most amazing and the last pair of scissors one would ever need to buy) began when I got out of graduate school. I made the transition from...
The Six Hardest Words?
Sometimes I think the six hardest words in the English language are “I don’t know” and “I was wrong”. There is often an aversion to admit that we know less than we really do, to owning up to our shortcomings, or to being willing to seek insights from others....
Lavish Perks Revisited
I recently read a report, “How Millennials Want to Work and Live”, published earlier this year by the Gallup organization[1]. The findings, resulting from extensive research, identified six changes that leaders must make to effectively lead those members of the...
Marshmallows, Spaghetti and The Planning Fallacy
Recently while facilitating a class for a group of graduate students and post docs, I touched on the fallacy of strategic planning as it has been taught for generations in business schools across the country. The traditional planning approach, with the usual...
Fix The Business, Not The Culture
When my copy of the April 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review arrived in the mail, the headline across the front cover, in bright orange type, resonated with me: “You Can’t Fix Culture”. This is a message I have been preaching for years. Focus on your business, not...
Developing Dashboards That Work
Check out this article on designing a business dashboard that’s right for you, written by my InnovaNet colleague, Terry Mushrush. I Want A Dashboard by Terry Mushrush April 2016
MODEX 2016
I spoke at MODEX in Atlanta yesterday. I wanted to share my presentation with everyone. Click the picture below to download it.
Why Google hands out such lavish perks—It’s not just for the team.
Visit any Google campus, from Mountain View, California to Dublin, Ireland, and you will be struck by the efforts the company has made to create a fun, spirited, sensory rich environment. Replete with ski gondolas in Zurich, a sidewalk café in Istanbul, vegetable...
Risk-taking business leaders – did they learn differently as children??
What can we learn about leadership from our childhood experiences? How might our early life lessons shape our tendency to take risks and innovate as entrepreneurs and business leaders? Growing up in Atlanta during the 1960’s was considerably different from today. My...
Is Running Your Company Like Riding a Bicycle?
I remember well the first time I rode a bike. Or, rather, tried to ride a bike. The initial excitement and confidence (“I can do that, it looks so easy”) soon followed by an almost immobilizing fear that froze me in place. This was before the scrapes and bruises that...
How a Lightning Strike Almost Destroyed a Company
Friday, March 17, 2000. By all accounts it was a typical day. The week was winding down and preparations were being made for the weekend. There was a lot to talk about in the news. The US elections were heating up in the lead-up to what would prove to be one of the...
What I Have In Common With Richard Branson and Paul Allen!
It was the one question that I had not anticipated. The answer changed my outlook on how to do business. In the early stages of my consulting practice, I was meeting the chairman of the board of a struggling medical products venture. Mentally rehearsing my successes...
What David Bowie Said About Innovation
The world lost a legend last week. And whether you liked his particular genre of music or not, there’s no doubt that David Robert Jones, aka David Bowie…
Risk-embracing Organizations
It seems that almost every day there’s a new book or article about risk-tolerant versus risk-averse organizations. These authors tell us how it is through taking risks that we change and grow, both as individuals and as companies. However, the most successful,...
Risk Innovation and Kodak
T.S. Eliot once said, “"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go." Innovation Innovation is about pushing boundaries. It’s about venturing from the world of the known to the world of the unknown. It’s about uncertainty....