How a Simple Essay Contest Influenced a Company-Wide Culture Shift
In September 1996, John Petrucci joined State Auto Insurance as an Agency Development Specialist. That’s when our focus on sales really started to come to the forefront. I had the good fortune of learning more about sales in that first year with John than I had in my previous ten in the industry! John resurrected […]
Our European Adventure
You may have noticed there haven’t been any blog posts for several weeks. That’s because Jane and I took a vacation to Europe with two of our closest friends. We started in Lyon, France. Lyon is set on the Saone River. What a beautiful city and so easy to access by foot. From there we […]
Kindness or Conflict: What Cycle Are You Creating?
What does it mean to be virtuous? Most of us would say it means having good character—being kind, honest, and doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. Now consider the opposite: to be vicious. That might sound extreme, but it doesn’t have to mean physically violent. Viciousness can show up subtly, and not so subtly, as […]
Sharing is Caring…But Sometimes Less is More
Have you ever been in a conversation that quietly slipped from dialogue into monologue? Or watched someone walk into a room and take over the discussion like a vacuum sucking all the air out? You’re not alone. Most of us have felt the discomfort of being on the receiving end of conversational domination. The irony […]
Dallas Willard and C.S. Lewis on Lived Experience
Last week, I shared some thoughts on the rise of “lived experience” and the need to interpret those experiences carefully—because, as I put it, lived experience is an “N of 1.” That post sparked got me thinking more deeply about a related question: What do we use to measure our experiences against? In this week’s post […]
