What Do You Do When There’s Tension at the Top?

There are three well-known West Coast asset management firms (financial services speak for mutual funds, venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, or fund of funds firms) – none of them clients – where the firm’s leadership team members barely tolerate each other.

They talk when they must. Otherwise they minimize their working relationships as much as possible.

The firms make money. … Read the rest

The Simple Secret to Team Success: “Road Trip”

Road Trip Adventure
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North Americans (OK, maybe just those of us who are Yankees) love simple solutions, especially to complex problems.

We want a pill to cure obesity (instead of a change in diet, lifestyle, better sleep, and appropriate physical activity) and student testing to cure educational ills (in lieu of better teacher training and development, better resourcing, smaller class size, and greater parental involvement).… Read the rest

[Tips for Entrepreneurs] The Secret(s) to Your Start-Up

Things are bubbling in the technology start-up world: not 1998 frothy, but clearly bubbling nonetheless.

And even while there is sobering reality – for example Tom Abate’s piece yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle Why Silicon Valley Faces Fresh Threatsthere are telltale signals that things may be changing.

Signs of a cautious optimism can be found from the uptick in the amount of venture capital investment – noted courtesy Chubby Brain here in the highest number of deals occurring in the US in Q4 2009 at US$5.5 B with an aggregate of US$20B for the year – to articles such as Dharmesh Shah’s in OnStartups.com… Read the rest

[Life Back West] July 2009 – The Road Trip

Life today seems to move ever so quickly. Though it’s likely an observation shared by people throughout the centuries, our Twitter / 24 by 7 news cycle lives seem to almost eliminate the time to pause, to think, and to talk deeply. It seems true for people, and it seems true for organizations.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Earlier this month I had a chance to catch a reunion of college friends from the small liberal arts college (“the first university in the West”) from which I received my undergraduate degree.Read the rest