Category Archives: Book Discussion

Nonviolent Communication [Book Club]

Today we go back to our book club and talk about Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It’s really foundational work that has elements pulled into a lot of other books that we’ve already discussed, and I think it’s essential for people who are looking to be better leaders. It’s also great to learn how to communicate with more empathy, to frame and phrase questions and engagement that explains your feelings, needs and intents, and hear other people’s needs.

If that sounds a little bit too foo-foo for you, bear with me. This is a really, really, really powerful communication technique.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/2p1NpJOZbuLxixQVOK…?utm_source=copy_url

Two But Rule by John Wolpert [Book Discussion]

This episode is one of our book club episodes starring John Walpole, who wrote the Two But Rule, which is very tongue in cheek while also very serious about momentum thinking and using a negative bouncy discussion pattern.


I like to think of it as a bouncy discussion pattern to really explore ideas and drive ideation in a positive way by asking and challenging people’s ideas in a constructive way.


Transcript: otter.ai/u/2-CzhoZXo1U9URwEc3…?utm_source=copy_url

Tofu vs a Death of Expertise

The TerraForm fork, now known as the OpenTofu project, is our first topic in today’s episode. We discuss what’s going on with that, the challenges, as well as the potential pressures from HashiCorp that created this whole situation.

How do we get experts to recover their authority and how do we look at organizations like that? We have about 20 minutes of really involved conversation about the book, Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols, from the previous podcast. If you haven’t heard our first part of the conversation, I suggest you go back and listen to our full Death of Expertise podcast.

We cover two topics, one of them short term and one of them long term. So it’s a nice, balanced industry discussion around what the fork means, what its impacts are and a little bit of recap. There’s some really spicy opinions around 32 minutes in if you want to jump forward, we resume our discussion about death of expertise.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/zGUYDP6DynzxPBNLM9…?utm_source=copy_url
Photo by lil artsy: www.pexels.com/photo/person-abou…ur-dices-1111597/

Death of Expertise [Book Discussion]

We continue our book group series today about the Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols, which is very dense with a lot of provocative and thought provoking comments, topics and ideas. It was so interesting that we decided we needed two sessions to fully unpack this. This is part one, which is about how expertise as a society is handled, how social media changes and the cyclical nature of confidence in our institutions, and how technology is shaped in buying patterns in use by expertise. If you’re interested, please participate in part two of the discussion!

We also talked about the Dunning Kruger effect, the idea that the less you know about something, the more confident you are, and that gaining knowledge makes you more knowledgeable but also less falsely confident in how you present yourself. It’s a more complex topic than that very short summary.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor

Transcript: otter.ai/u/m–7wT4fRjdodT3qRu…?utm_source=copy_url
Image is book cover