No one would be shocked to hear profanity on Wall Street from the trading floor to the boardroom. Everywhere that is except the main avenue of communication: the Bloomberg terminal. For more than 25 years the platform that investment professionals use to...

I gave a speech at the annual meeting of the Professional Speechwriters Association in Washington, DC last week. It seemed both presumptuous and absurd to accept an invitation from David Murray to speak to professional speechwriters.  I have only written...

WALL STREET STOCK AND BOND TRADERS USED TO WRITE EMAILS AND MEMOS TO ONE ANOTHER IN UPPERCASE LIKE THIS.  It seems hard to imagine now, but in the early 1990s the Bloomberg terminals that Wall Street used to communicate didn’t have lowercase....

The internet – especially social media – can be a den of cruelty.  We are regularly reminded how it can stoke hatred and division.  But it can also connect people and be a source of joy. I was reminded of that this past week by a package I got in the mail. ...

Jason Alexander, the actor who played George Costanza on Seinfeld, wanted to play Hamlet when he was studying theater at Boston University.  Sophomore year, he got some career advice that changed his trajectory.  One of his professors at Boston...

Coffee crops up in a lot of stories about Michael Bloomberg.  In his autobiography he claims his very first action after starting the company in 1981 was to buy a coffee pot for the tiny office he rented with several partners.  A couple of weeks ago I...

Everyone these days seems to aspire to generational wealth.  Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a notable exception. It’s long been known Wozniak wasn’t a billionaire. He sold his Apple shares after the 1980 IPO and he’s open about his...

My father leans on aphorisms to express his opinions. We were at the beach last week when one of his grandkids lamented that they had applied for a job that was going to require hard work. Dad piped up: ”You can’t learn to swim without getting your head...

Companies are fond of saying that their employees are their No 1 asset. Assuming that is true, it’s odd how companies react when those assets walk out the door. Typically firms ignore, forget or even treat former employees with hostility. In the modern...

Mike Bloomberg has a disarming way that he often starts meetings: he offers to get you a cup of coffee. It’s a small, but remarkable gesture and one he extends to people ranging from presidents to product managers.  It starts when you arrive at his...