American novelist, Johnathan Franzen, is regarded as one of the greatest emerging novelists of the 21st century. His work has garnered widespread critical acclaim, with one critic calling his 2015 novel, Purity, “Piercingly brilliant.” As talented he may be, though, there’s one thing that Franzen owes to his prolificity as a writer: his preference for precommitments.  For […]

In the mid-1960s, a researcher, posing as a volunteer, went door to door in an affluent area with an unusual request. The researcher asked if homeowners were willing to place an unsightly billboard on their front lawns, instructing drivers to “DRIVE CAREFULLY.” A mere 17 percent complied. Not bad, but not surprising, either. The researcher […]

Suppose you’re a factory worker and a machine you’re responsible for stops working. When pressed for a reason, you answer there was an overload, and the fuse blew.  You’re right in your assertion. The machine did overload, and the fuse was the reason. But after some self-interrogation, you realize that the root cause of the problem was not due […]

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) is regarded by many as the most important theoretical physicists of our time. A brilliant, albeit eccentric thinker, Feynman had a knack for simplifying the most complex of concepts and explaining them in a way that his students, with no prior knowledge, could easily understand.    To do that, he developed a mental […]

Toyota is famous for its workplace systems, chief among them, its approach to lean manufacturing. To eliminate wasted time and resources, Toyota’s production method models what’s called “just in time” manufacturing. Instead of sinking high costs into surplus parts, Toyota makes what is needed (not too many, not too few), when it is required (not […]