Author Archives: Charlene Norman

Forget Freezing Their Heads. Preserve Their Thinking Instead

Behind this button is the accumulation of a lifetime of work. Nearly twenty books, countless lectures and papers, and who knows how many notes. Written and spoken by one of the world’s smartest brains. (Not my superlative. That’s straight from Forbes.)   Ask anything. And listen. Really listen. To the answer. Mind-blowing. Ai Richard I’m […]

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What Happens When There’s Nobody Left to Conquer?

YES, I know there are multiple wars going on. NO, this is NOT specifically about any of them. But if you see similarities …… Did you hear that Unilever is buying McCormick’s spices? It’s a bit complicated. Unilever is spinning off its food business to merge with spices leader McCormick & Company in a ginormous […]

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The Grudge that Outlived its Reason

Last week was Easter. For Christians, it’s the season of atonement, forgiveness, and renewal. Even if you don’t follow that tradition and you simply feel some kinship with a source greater than yourself, you likely understand forgiveness at its most fundamental level. It has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything to […]

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Your Personal SPAM and FOMO Are Wrecking the Planet. Yes, Yours.

Here is an uncomfortable idea to sit with. The climate crisis is not just a story about oil companies, corrupt politicians, and the occasional billionaire with a superyacht. It is also a story about you. About me. About the completely normal, socially rewarded things we do every single day without a second thought. Stay with […]

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She Wasn’t Legally a Person, Until She Was Two

Doris dropped the F-bomb late last year. She was 98. It landed exactly as intended! I just got back from a couple of weeks in the far north of Ontario, where we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 99th trip around the sun. She still lives in her own home. She has all her marbles. Every. Single. One. […]

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When Did You Last Audit Your Relationships?

Provocative question, I know. But I recently did this exercise and was genuinely blown away. I want to walk you through it. First, full credit where it’s due. This isn’t my work. It belongs to a brilliant fellow named Ant Blair. You can find him at antblair.com. He’s currently updating his website and programs, so […]

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Bring In the Artists

If what got us into a predicament cannot be what gets us out of it, then we need different thinking, different perspectives, and different priorities. That is the cleanest way I know to make the case for diversity without getting tangled in the vocabulary that tends to derail the conversation before it begins. Here is […]

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The Cheapest, Most Powerful Thing You Can Do. Right Now!

Do you remember being six years old?Someone told you that you’d done something amazing, and the feeling was electric. Pure. Instantaneous. You stood a little taller. Smiled a little wider. Felt, for one shining moment, like you could do anything. Here’s what nobody tells you: that feeling never goes away. More than twenty, forty, sixty […]

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The Thing Jensen Huang Can’t Sell Us

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia and arguably the most powerful man in the current AI revolution, said something quietly devastating to students at Cambridge University recently. “Intelligence is about to be a commodity.” He wasn’t being pessimistic. He was being precise. The thing we’ve spent decades credentialing, testing, and competing over, y’know, our raw […]

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Steve Jobs & the Silo Problem

Last week I told you about failing the GMAT and feeling like a misfit. About learning that intelligence comes in forms our education system doesn’t measure or value. This week, I want to talk about Steve Jobs. But not the Steve Jobs you think you know. In 1995, Jobs sat down for a raw, unfiltered […]

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