"...work on your act."

Here are three more excerpts from the readings that have captivated me recently. Want to see more of these? Sign-up for my newsletter.

"There is a story about an exchange between Jerry Seinfeld and a young comedian. The comedian approaches Seinfeld in a club one night and asks him for advice about marketing and getting exposure. Exposure? Marketing? Seinfeld asks. Just work on your act...That’s the job. Selecting and Connecting. We need to forget about tertiary concerns...We need to keep our eye on the ball. We need to work on our act. Nothing else is of any consequence."

"Great persuaders are irresistible throughout all of history. But at no time in our historical record have interpersonal communication skills been as important as they are today...Because today, anyone, anywhere in the world who is better at expressing their ideas can see a sudden massive increase in wealth that is unprecedented in human history."

"Everyone knows the pain of feeling left out, but fewer discuss the dread of needlessly being left in... In the rightful pursuit of lifting up diverse voices and opinions in recent years, leaders have started over-correcting. In order to reach a happy middle ground, they must pay attention not just to moments of exclusion, but over-inclusion — cc’ing more people than necessary in emails, jam-packing meeting rooms, and creating multi-armed project teams. According to our research, the way to create that efficiency is through a careful process of expectation matching."