by Bruce | January 30, 2019 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Ineffable, Just Plain Interesting, Leadership, Strategy
My title for today steals literally from Ronald Coase’s legendary 1937 paper of the same name, which gained Coase the Nobel in Economics in 1991. The paper, barely over a dozen pages long, asks the question, childlike in its simplicity, “why do firms...
by Bruce | December 28, 2018 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Ineffable, Leadership, Partnership Structures
The lawyer personality type scores notoriously high on “autonomy.” Certainly compared to average citizens, but even to average white-collar professionals, lawyers are driven to do their own thing their own way. You see it all day every day if you hang...
by Bruce | March 9, 2018 | Articles, Finance, Ineffable, Just Plain Interesting
John Adams notably wrote that “facts are stubborn things.” Words, however, can be fluid, flexible, and subject at times to arbitrary diktat. This last sense was famously expressed in Alice in Wonderland “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather...
by Bruce | July 7, 2017 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Ineffable, Leadership
Unknown to me was that Chief Justice John Roberts’ son has been attending, and just graduated (9th grade) from Cardigan Mountain School in New Hampshire. Dad delivered the commencement address. An excerpt: Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish...
by Bruce | July 4, 2016 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Ineffable, Strategy
With the world seemingly departing from the familiar for parts unknown almost anywhere one looks these days (the Middle East’s evidently insatiable crescendo of chaos, Brexit, the paranormal US election, even staid central bankers exploring the world of negative...
by Bruce | November 17, 2015 | Articles, Client Relationships, Finance, Ineffable
The final installment in the saga of our intrepid volunteers of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church wrestling with the hairball of New York City land use, zoning, landmarks, and countless other laws and regulations in trying to reach what should be a simple...