With ~32 years of experience working in consulting firms, start-ups, and corporations the signal-to-noise ratio of my work is getting better. I still fail at miracles but what I lack in paranormal I make up with exertion.I enjoy working with people who have done something useful, built something, sold something, generated cash, and those who have experienced the world beyond their home by crossing borders. I have convinced myself, in almost three decades, that I like to solve problems and consequently realized, with annoying regularity, how the sensible simple is discarded for the needlessly complicated. I celebrate, just like a child cherishes a large scoop of ice-cream, brief presentations. I laugh when assaulted by bruisers like: “The proposed holistic transformation is designed to understand and act on the multi-dimensional emotional finger-print of the target persona when engaging with our value offering's surface features.” My career is sprinkled rich with confections like this one, cheerily baked by MBAs for the slow death of capitalism.Fine historians and some economists, you see, make the best teachers. I enjoy reading which reminds me how much more is yet to be read. I am a fan of thinkers like Drucker, Chandler, Sowell, Kahneman, Tom Peters, George Will, Friedman, Galbraith, Ram Charan, Martin Wolf, Goldratt, Lecky, Handy, Barry Humphries, John Mortimer, Kennan, Dennet, Dawkins, Tribe, Hitchens, Sir John Cleese, Tuchman, Stephen Fry etc. Their ideas are punchy. Consequently, I often take positions which slide me on an endangered species list. I am considering starting a rumor that I may be nearing my planned professional expiration to disarm the flock of consultants which presumes to solve a problem without grasping its essentials. And there is persuasive evidence to confirm that the abiding confidence of this naive gang of ‘advisors’ is inversely proportional to its average age and to its neglect of the underlying humanity of the issues at hand, with empathy-be-damned confidence.Free cash flow is still a durable standard when evaluating the appeal and half-life of ideas. The working title of my book, asymptotic to finish line, is “Cash flow, sex on the beach and other sensible ideas”.Let’s solve a problem? Given long history, there is a respectable chance I will be in the general vicinity of being approximately right. And I quote Sr. Andrés Medina Alvarez, from the novel The Triumph by J.K. Galbraith, that on some topics “I have no idea. And I am now of an age where I do not need to pretend to knowledge that I do not possess.” Hello!