Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
My colleague John Rehm – fresh from a tour of duty in Asia with IDEO leading innovation projects – flagged a post at HBR.com by Campbell Soup Company CEO and President Doug Conant titled Five Steps to Building Your Network.
If you’ve read Conant’s book with Nette Norgaard, Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments, you know that his candor and personal openness is unusual (unfortunately) for most senior executives.… Read the rest
We’re living in an interesting time; information that appears material or conflicting by the optics test for companies goes unmentioned.
At one hand we have the purchase by a senior Berkshire Hathaway exec of stock of a company that was subsequently bought by the firm (see this WSJ piece ) or the flap regarding whether Apple was legally required to provide information on CEO Steve Jobs health (see this article from the NY Times on the release of material information).… Read the rest
There are lessons that some startups learn after they’ve crashed, and mistakes that successful startups either learn early or avoid making.
If you want to be successful as a startup, learn these lessons early – or be very lucky and avoid them.
Lunch yesterday with my friend and colleague Dr. Jo Whitehouse – a rockstar in the startup world – highlighted two of them.… Read the rest
Two data points but heck, that’s how suspicion about global warning started; unless you’re Oklahoma Senator Jim Imhofe, we all know what that data ended up demonstrating.
What might these two data points be, and what do they mean for you?
Last week Martin Burns (@RecruiterMoe) one of my Twitter friends was tweeting the joys and skills of a software engineer.… Read the rest
“War is hell” said William T. Sherman – and most likely right before he burned down Atlanta (image right) on his famous “march to the sea” during the United States Civil War.
Office politics are a close second, particularly in the types of workplaces that either tacitly permit them or promote them.
In those atmospheres – not unlike some of the world’s cultures – to operate effectively you have to be quasi schizophrenic; keep separated what you think and believe, and what you say you think and believe.… Read the rest
As sure as night follows day, a “bubble” envelops CEOs and other senior leaders once an organization starts to grow beyond 10 or 15 people. It’s the nature of having a leadership position, the number of people in an organization, and the fact that humans operate in certain predictable ways.
While it’s a bubble that can provide some needed buffer, it’s also a bubble that disables.… Read the rest