Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
If you live in a certain City by the bay, sooner or later little surprises you.
Annoy you? Yes. Delight you? Often. Alarm, disappoint, thrill, and endear? Always.
It’s those differences that make the place so special. Take away those difference and ultimately it leads to one destination; the land of boring, common, even mediocre.
Some workplaces are just like that City.… Read the rest
We all have many “parts” that sit within our one self; father, daughter, employee, leader, neighbor, worker, religious believer and maybe even a baseball fan. You get the idea.
Here’s another idea; what if you brought them all together in whatever you did – like your day job? One unified whole, not just a part you pull out of some trunk when you needed it and then tucked it back away after use.… Read the rest
There are a number of formulas for success for building “can’t miss” start-up and founding teams.
Here’s one that actually works.
A disclaimer first; depending on your business you’ll need to have reasonable domain expertise. If you’re in the internet networking space, you need to have people on your founding team that have the technical chops to have the engineering aspects nailed, as well as somebody who understands the competitive market dynamics (who buys gear, who is the competition, who is a player, who is not, etc.).… Read the rest
There was a 1960’s coming of age movie about four Midwestern guys titled “Where the Boys Are.” Funny and clever for its time, it was also laden with stereotypical models of life – including the roles of women and men – of that era.
If you squint (“Really hard,” some of my colleagues would suggest) there is a different plot playing out in the corporate world in the United States today.… Read the rest
Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg (pictured) does a terrific brief talk at TEDwomen “Why Few Women at the Top” – worth everyone viewing and everybody – not just women – taking note.
It is like my good (female) friend at a leading global investment bank who asked me to help her network with other senior women in financial services in San Francisco when I managed recruiting for Barclays Global Investors (at the time the world’s largest money manager – it’s now owned by BlackRock).… Read the rest
There are many reasons to love this time of year.
Day (actually daylight) will start to get longer, spring and warmth is not too far around the corner, and it’s also the time of year when the annual churn in US college and professional football teams happens with uncanny predictability.
For those of us who work in “regular” business, the football sports world offers a great analogue for things like leadership, assessment, and succession.… Read the rest