Let me begin this article by saying that hiking is nothing new to me. I know, I know, as The Bard himself so eloquently put it: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" (Queen Gertrude in Act III, Scene II of Hamlet, for the unaware). But it's true. I was somewhat forcibly enrolled into a program in high school that included two intense camping/bonding experiences per year that always involved serious treks. And then there are the four years I spent in the Marines that invo

- Elana Duffy There is a point in our business lives where we can all set aside our pre-supposed differences and get along. Reaching that point should be a goal for all of us, not just because it’s nice to think we can all sit and have coffee together, but because we need to do this for the betterment of business and productivity. I am an engineer. Engineers build. We think logically: we have a train of thought that boards at a station, travels a defined path, and disembarks

- Elana Duffy Serve your customers well and they will serve you in return. That concept sounds so easy, right? Two run-ins lately have made we wonder whether some companies care at all about customers or what their customers think. Delayed packages. Rude employees. Double charges on credit cards that take 53 minutes to resolve on the phone. And of course, it is always our fault, not theirs, as if we should diligently plan for every possible way they can let us down. In 2015,

- Frank Luby Two of the most frightening business headlines over the last three weeks both involved the state of California and a couple of guys named Cook. Benjamin Cook, a NASA scientist, co-authored a new study which claims that the western part of the United States will face its worst drought in 1,000 years, worse than anyone has previously expected. Fellow NASA scientist Tom Painter warned that "Water demand has passed supply in some areas. Throwing 30 years of drought o

- Paul Mooney Creative writing is not something reserved only for those dreaming of selling their first literary masterpiece to the world at large. Storytelling is a key element of many things we do in business, from presentations to white papers (to stories at the water cooler, but we are trying to stay in the non-fiction realm here). I'll clear up any mystery right off the bat: the hard part is actually writing something. Not all that mysterious of a revelation, I grant you

- Frank Luby The Economist welcomed us to 2015 with a handful of intriguing articles on the future of work. In “Workers On Tap”, they framed up the growing free-lance economy as a battle in workers’ minds between job security and time flexibility. The article implied older workers (which include me) place greater value on the former while Millennials prefer the latter. Other recent articles confirm that Millennials want even more than flexibility, they want input and interest

- Paul Mooney Let me begin by directing you to the earlier post from Present Tense partner Elana Duffy highlighting the good business sense to be taken from Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22. It inspired me to write a similar article about my favorite novel, but since that's also Catch-22, that was a no-go. And since my second favorite novel is Frank Herbert's epic Dune, I figured I'd choose a different medium as I'm not quite sure how to tie a tale of space witches, sem

We’ve published our first “self-help” ebook on storytelling skills Present Tense LLC is launching a series of ebooks aimed at executives, managers, and others who would like straightforward, simple ways to improve their storytelling skills. The first one has finally hit the ebook shelves: 10/10: How to write business content that is memorable and effective. Now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes and other major platforms, this quick read will help you generate

- Stacey Ebert Professional development can be a trial. No one wants to sit through monotone presentations or worse, click-through online training that takes them away from the mounting pile of work sitting on their desk. That’s true no matter how strong our love for broadening horizons and expanding our knowledge. The irony is that professional development is critical to employee engagement, yet it often comes across as dull, mindless, and lacking energy. If those presentati

Paul Mooney As someone who spent four years as an officer in the Marines, I'm no stranger to large, complex operations. Weeks, months even, of hard work comprised of long, slow periods of planning punctuated by intense moments of stress that can last for days. Since leaving the service I’ve thankfully not encountered similar situations, but the last few months I've spent producing a TV pilot I wrote has come extremely close. While this particular task is by no means a commonl

Elana Duffy Veteran’s Day, Armistice Day, whatever you call it in your country, the idea is the same in many countries that took part in the First World War: honor and remembrance to those who fought for freedoms, and those who laid down their lives to protect their countrymen. It is a day of peace and respect. Being a veteran, it seemed prudent to address the concept of expanding some timeless leadership techniques from the battlefield to management. Love or loathe the milit

Paul Mooney A screenplay probably looks like a strange piece of work from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with how scripts are written. The text is in widely-spaced blocks of varying widths, some words and lines are in all capital letters, and most of the pages look pretty sparse compared to the average essay or book. But screenplays are actually written with some very simple and specific objectives in mind that are applicable in any form of writing. Every word has purp

- Frank Luby An Inc. article this week asked whether Apple could kill the freemium music model when it relaunches Beats Music. It also cited some data and interesting analyses from Venrock’s David Pakman on how much people spend on music. Think about that phrase for a moment: “how much people spend on music”. Music spending and music pricing are third rails that I usually grab eagerly with both hands. Instead of letting those sparks fly again, though, I would like to use the

- Elana Duffy My favorite book is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Between the sardonic humor, sarcasm, and - however ridiculous the book may seem - truisms of military life, it has captured my attention time and again. It is different; it emulates none of the other stories of its time, and continues to challenge me as a reader to notice something new with each reading. Not to mention its accuracies that apply to other aspects of life, such as business. Having left the military and

- Paul Mooney In my last post I covered one of the biggest impediments to creativity in advertising and business: fear. This time I'll be addressing an even more universal hurdle to creative progress: laziness. While it’s certainly not as daunting a word as fear, laziness is an equally pervasive problem. So how do you identify it, prevent it, and stop it? Obviously, laziness is a pretty broad term widely used to describe personal faults. Lazy people or groups of people are, b

- Frank Luby One week after an EF4 tornado destroyed Marysville, Indiana in March 2012, I performed clean-up work as part of a United Way effort. As the sun set through the mangled trees on that Saturday afternoon, another volunteer made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. “You know, it’s amazing how much you can get done when there are no leaders around,” he said. His comment triggered questions I’d never thought to ask before this experience. How can a group of tot

- Elana Duffy Understanding what makes a band sync well together on stage has nothing to do with the style of music, in the same way that understanding what will best build your teams and put your best story before your customers has nothing to do with what you are building. Good business is an art form, and one that follows the same general rules of consonance and dissonance that make sculpture or novels or a concerto pleasing. Allowing your customers and employees to get lo

- Paul Mooney When was the last time you saw a television commercial that really made you laugh or, even less likely, positively affected your feelings towards a product? If you can actually recall that happening, I imagine the experience was so extraordinary that the ad in question springs immediately to mind. Most of the time, we either ignore ads or spend the time on something more interesting and less annoying, such as using the restroom. Ads share the same themes and gim

This is to serve as an introduction, a way to eliminate the feeling of being strangers. The founders of Present Tense want you to know their stories, where they come from, why they do what they do, so you can see deeper and, in turn, let them help you find YOUR story. This is Frank: Founder, writer, editor, CEO. I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember, creating and illustrating worlds that grew more elaborate the older I got. Most of my earliest childhood memo

The world is full of great ideas and great stories no one knows about. A few of them are probably in your head right now. Our mission at Present Tense LLC is to get those ideas and stories out of your head and into something your customers, fans, or friends will want to read. The goal is to get those ideas out now, not when you “find the time”, because that will never happen. We are a team of multi-taskers, and we know you are, too. Between managing your people, developing yo