Blog

  • May 21, 2025By Stephen Graves

    I spent my teenage summers alone on what my parents called a “gentleman’s farm”—though there wasn’t much genteel about it. They were running a small business half an hour away, and I was left with a VCR, a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica, and a rotary-dial phone with a cord long enough to wrap around

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  • May 12, 2025By Stephen Graves

    Over the years working in the field of building narratives and managing various campaigns, I’ve learned that raw numbers alone don’t win elections or build public trust. What really moves people is Political Storytelling With Data—the art of turning spreadsheets and charts into narratives that resonate with voters’ hopes, fears, and everyday realities. Why Political

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  • May 6, 2025By Stephen Graves

    Everyone’s talking about digital transformation like it’s a shiny new trend. It’s not. It’s survival. And if you’ve been in the trenches—whether running a city agency or a startup—you know that data alone won’t get you there. You need analytics. Not as a reporting tool, but as your compass. Why Analytics Is the Engine Behind

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  • April 28, 2025By Stephen Graves

    Every time President Donald Trump drops a “crazy” line like “we should make Canada the 51st state,” the professional pearl-clutchers leap into action. Outrage! Horror! How dare he! But behind the spectacle lies a tactical play that seasoned executives and negotiators recognize immediately: he’s not floating a serious plan to annex our northern neighbor. He’s

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  • March 19, 2025By Stephen Graves

    For all the talk of drones, AI warfare, and next-gen battlefield tech, the decisive action that may mark the turning point of this war wasn’t led by machines—it was led by men. Elite Russian special forces, crawling through a forgotten gas pipeline in the dead of night, emerged behind enemy lines and shattered Ukraine’s defenses

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  • November 6, 2024By Stephen Graves

    With the recent confirmation that Donald Trump will be the next President, coupled with a Republican majority in the Senate likely to confirm his cabinet appointees and support legislative initiatives, the question arises: What does this mean for the U.S. economy and what plans has Trump outlined? Here’s a look at his approach to key

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  • November 3, 2024By Stephen Graves

    With just a few days ahead of the highly anticipated 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris I wanted to provide my take on it. While this analysis reflects my own interpretation of current trends and observations after analyzing various polls, campaign behaviors, and the political landscape, I want to emphasize that it

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  • January 2, 2023By Stephen Graves

    Like many people, I enjoy listening to different kinds of music – in fact, my tastes run the gamut. Some are great for exercise, others for relaxing and some music even helps me get in the creative mood. Occasionally, I like to delve into music from my Southern heritage, from well known ballads and bluegrass

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  • January 2, 2023By Stephen Graves

    One of my passions is the study of strategy and leadership. Whether military, business, sports or political, I have always been fascinated by the thinking and decision making that goes into out-thinking your opponent and getting people to follow you, especially in chaotic times. I have read untold number of books and treatises on the

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  • January 2, 2023By Stephen Graves

    I was writing a checklist on improving team performance and thought it would be useful to expand on it. Bruce Tuckman first proposed the team development model of Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing and it is a core principle of management theory. What I have found is that many teams really never get out of the storming stage, where

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