A thoughtful book by Marcus Buckingham on how to design love into business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a thoughtful 2026 book by Marcus Buckingham titled Design Love In: How to unleash the most powerful force in business. Google Books has a preview through page 38. Marcus discusses it in a ChangeThis manifesto on April 8, 2026 titled The Business Case for Love. DLI is his acronym for Design Love In.

 

On page 11 he says:

 

“For leaders to create reliable, repeatable changes in behavior, they must focus on the experience that creates the forces that create the behavior. This means leaders must understand their real job. Leadership is not fundamentally about clarifying expectations or motivating teams or cascading strategies. Leadership is the craft of shaping the experiences that shape human behavior. Leaders – the most effective ones – are experience-makers.

 

This insight reframes leadership entirely. Every moment between a leader and a colleague or a leader and a customer is an experience. The first day on the job is an experience. The weekly check-in is an experience. Sending an email is an experience. Presenting work is an experience. Being recognized, being challenged, being supported – or conversely, being dismissed or ignored – are all experience. What we measure on employee and customer surveys are felt experiences. What we label ‘culture’ is really just the aggregated experiences of the employees. When we say we want to build a strong culture, what we actually mean is that we want to design every touchpoint so carefully that each person has a similar experience. (And culture building is so hard precisely because there are so many touchpoints that have to be designed).

 

Always remember that because leaders create experiences in every moment, they are always shaping the internal forces that shape behavior. The question is not whether you, as a leader, are an experience-maker. You are. The question is whether you’re a skilled one.

 

So to help you build this skill, in part one of the book you’ll learn that love isn’t purely mysterious – that instead, love, when deconstructed, reveals itself to comprise five distinct feelings. These five feelings are sequential. You start with number one and end with number five. The leader with the DLI skill knows how to use this sequence as their blueprint for designing love in to [sic] anything - from onboarding to a team meeting to a customer interaction with a brand.

 

….In part two of the book, you’ll take these insights, this data and these perspectives, and put them into practice. Specifically, you’ll learn the playbook for how to design love in to [sic] the experiences of those you lead and of those you serve.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A table of mine, shown above, summarizes the five feelings of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marcus has a series of nine graphics starting on page 17  (which I have summarized above in another table) which compare the Current mindSET with the corresponding DLI mindMOVE.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, as shown above, his curious choice of graphics put the Current mindSET at the upper left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Cartesian coordinates we would expect that to be at the lower left (Quadrant III) and the DLI mindMOVE at the upper right (Quadrant I), as is shown in my revision.

 

The falling in love cartoon came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

How long have the political insults of calling Democrats either Dumocrats or Dumbocrats been around?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald J. Trump is not very original. An article by Patrick Reilly in the New York Post on May 15, 2026 titled Trump delights in savage new nickname for Democrats while revealing who inspired it described his supposedly originating Dumocrat.

 

But an article by Alyssa Ray at The Wrap on May 26, 2026 said Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Trump for Thinking He Came Up with ‘Dumocrats’ Line: ‘It was on The Simpsons in 1994’ | Video. That 13-minute video at Jimmy Kimmel Live on May 26. 2026 is titled Trump Skips Don Jr’s Wedding, Attacks DUMOCRATS on Memorial Day & Claims His Physical Went PERFECTLY. A 1:08 YouTube video clip by Luke Baker on May 27, 2026 is titled The Simpsons: Dumbocrats. The episode was in Simpsons Season 6, titled Sideshow Bob Roberts, and first aired back on October 9, 1994.

 

Is that the first use for Dumocrats? No! I searched at Google Books and found it in a Fortune magazine (Volume 58, 1958 - page 154) that refers to a monthly magazine called the Milner Dumocrat.

 

What about the similar term Dumbocrats? It turned up in an article by William Tucker in the American Spectator for May 1998 on page 26 titled Byting the hand that feeds us which said:

“The group heading up this opposition are known as Democrats, but let's call them by a more appropriate name, Dumbocrats.”

But my Google Books searches found that Dumbocrat also showed up way earlier. It was in the United States Review (Volume 199, 1927) on page 24 and then in The New Republic on September 12, 1928 in page 93. That insult is almost a century old! (And the Disney cartoon movie Dumbo only came out in 1941).

 

 

A book about what we eat with a global history of food

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Via interlibrary loan from the Twin Falls Public Library I got a 344-page 2025 book by Pierre Singaravelou and Sylvain Venayre (editors) titled What We Eat: A global history of food. There are 88 brief un-numbered chapters with the following titles, which I have been skimming:

 

Acheke, Bagels, Baguette, Banh Mi, Barbecue, Beer, Beet Sugar, Cassoulet, Caviar, Ceviche, Champagne, Charcuterie, Chicory, Chile con Carne, Chili Pepper, Chorba, Christmas Pudding, Coca-Cola, Coffee, Condensed Milk (Sweetened), Cornflakes, Couscous, Curry, Dafina, Dim Sum, Dogmeat, Doner Kebab, Feijoada, Fish and Chips, Fish Sauce (Nuoc Mam), Food Coloring and Preservatives, Freeze-Dried Foods, French Fries, Gin, Guacamole, Hamburger, Harissa, Hedgehog Stew, Hot Dogs, Hummus, Ice Cubes, Indomie, Injera, Ketchup, Lato, Maki, Margarine, Mate, Matzah, Mayonnaise, Naan, Noodles and Macaroni, Olive Oil, Orangina, Oyster, Palm Oil, Parmesan Cheese, Pepper, Pet Food and Treats, Pho, Pizza, Poke, Port Wine, Raki, Ramen, Rooibos, Roquefort, Rum, Sake, Salt, Sandwich, Sardines (Canned), Singapore Noodles, Soy Sauce, Spam. Sparkling Water, Suhi, Tapioca, Tea and Chai, Tikka, Tofu, Turkish Delight, Vanilla and Vanillan, Vodka, Whiskey, Wine, Yak Butter, and Yogurt.

 

It really should have been subtitled A Global History of Food and Drink, since there are 18 chapters about beverages.

 

This book is a good starting point for doing a speech about a food or foods, possibly including a demonstration. But not all the information in it is correct. The chapter on ramen has a paragraph on page 253 which claims that:

 

“A few years after the end of the American occupation, an invention enabled the dish to conquer households: freeze-dried ramen, launched by entrepreneur Ando Momofuku in 1958, who based his marketing on the official recommendations of the Ministry of Health. The Japanese were not eating enough wheat or meat, they argued. Momofuku’s first freeze-dried noodles, Nisshin Chikin Ramen, with their chicken broth, effectively compensated for all these shortcomings at a reasonable price.”

 

Noodle blocks in that ramen really were deep-fried, not freeze-dried. See the Wikipedia pages on Instant noodles and Ramen.

 

The food cartoon came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

A pie cartogram is less useful than a pie chart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not a fan of pie charts. But there is an even less useful one called a pie cartogram, as shown above. For a pie chart each wedge has a cut beginning at the center of the circle and extending to the rim. The cartogram removes that requirement so comparisons cannot be easily made via angles. All we have is areas.

 

Pie cartograms are described by eric at Stories & Stats on August 18, 2023 in an article titled Pie cartograms. An article at TYWKIWDBI on August 10, 2024 titled How do you slice a pie… chart? has another example.

 

 

I think that a bar chart, as shown above, is better for comparisons than a pie chart.

An xkcd cartoon shows a hilariously overloaded flag design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic for May 25, 2026 (which I colorized to yellow) has an awful flag design. Apparently all dozen ideas from the flag design committee were included. The worst is the bottom fringes that remind me of a for sale notice thumbtacked to an office bulletin board. The flag is analyzed at Explain xkcd. 

 

On May 14, 2016 I blogged about how Looking at flag design will change how you make PowerPoint slides. And on September 23, 2017 I posted about an example - A new, simpler, better flag for the city of Pocatello, Idaho. On June 30, 2020 I blogged about how Mississippi is going to change its state flag.

 

 

Images generated by artificial intelligence tools may be inaccurate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Dan Russell on his SearchReSearch blog for April 22, 2026 titled SearchResearch (4/23/26): AI image gen tools are great, as long as you don’t ask for accuracy. One of his examples is an electric kettle. Two images are shown, one from ChatGPT and another from Gemini. Both are missing the important bimetallic thermostat that cuts off the current when the water boils.

 

An 11-minute explanatory YouTube video by Quasar-Ed from November 4, 2024 is titled The Engineering behind Electric Kettles.

 

An image of a boiling kettle came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

How to write a five-star commencement speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 26, 2026 I blogged about how On May 2nd actor Hugh Jackman gave the commencement speech at Ball State University. When I was looking up the YouTube video for his speech to put in that post, I found a five-minute video from the Obama Foundation on May 21, 2026 titled How to write the perfect commencement speech. It has seven top tips from his presidential speechwriters:

 

Match the energy of the day!

Know your audience

Say something only you can say

Pick one big idea

Honor your audience’s accomplishment

Tell the truth

And (no surprise!) End With Hope

 

But I believe a perfect speech is an asymptote – a limit that can be approached but not quite reached. On February 20, 2011 I blogged about Effort and an asymptote.

 

The cartoon was assembled from a podium and star at OpenClipArt, and a speaker modified from Wikimedia Commons.