Umar bin Yusuf, being old and full of years, died quietly in his sleep. The old Bedouin left his camels to be divided amongst his three sons. One half to his eldest, Amir, one quarter to his second, Asad, and one sixth to his youngest, the wild Ali. The problem, of course, is that the…
Just about three years ago one of Canada’s premier accounting firms caught some of its juniors cheating on its internal training program. Not ten of them, not a hundred, but twelve hundred. Now, as if that weren’t sketchy enough, what if I told you this firm was the second largest professional services firm in the…
On this day, seventy five years ago, an English-Welsh Canadian war bride called her husband in from chores in the barn. “I think the baby’s coming, Les!” As is consistent with most everything I do, I chose to be born in the middle of the worst howling winter blizzard of the season. Total whiteout conditions,…
March 17 in North America is usually a silly day, silly in the nicest way. Anyone with a single drop of Irish blood, or even if the ship their spouse’s ancestors sailed to the new world had an Irish bosun, will dress in green, paste made-in-China shamrocks all over the office, and leave early to…
“To everything,” said the Wise Man, “there is a season.” Our careers included. The thing about seasons is that they are best defined in retrospect. It’s pretty easy to look back on the summer that was, but not as easy to say the day it arrived or the day it left. The same is true…
About the last thing you might want right now is one more commentary about AI – artificial intelligence. But humor me, because there is one small corner of the discussion which is mostly overlooked. Anyone who has used ChatGPT or any of its cousins to create a “photograph” of a horned albino monkey riding a…
Sometime between three and four hundred thousand years ago mankind learned to make and use fire. Nothing has been the same since. About thirty thousand years ago someone in Central Eurasia (probably a teenage male) was courageous enough or crazy enough to climb onto the back of a terrified horse. As the steppe-dwelling tribespeople soon…
As most readers know, writing and speaking is not my first career. Actually, it is my third, law being the second, and teaching being the first. In my last two years of teaching I was privileged to work for a wonderful leader and mentor, Roy Thomas. I didn’t take all of his advice, but that’s…
If this has a familiar ring, it’s because you’ve read this theme before in this blog. It’s important enough to repeat. Toad Day is something I read about decades ago in one of the practice management texts I used to devour. It’s something we instituted at the office and practiced for years, at least until…
George Hees was something else. Known as something of a playboy in his youth, “Gorgeous George” had it all – looks, charm, wit, and amazing prowess, on the playing field and off. An officer in the Canadian Army during WWII, he was noted for his courage, but near the end of the war he was…