Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
You’ll recall that Thompson replaced Carol Bartz several months ago. Bartz was fired via a phone call from Yahoo’s chairman. Candor and accuracy was and is never an issue with Bartz, something that probably did not advance her career with the Yahoo board.
Journalist (and Twitter friend) Kara Swisher noted regarding the Carol Bartz debacle that “there really is no good time to fire someone.”
I think Kara’s work is great, and I’d suggest otherwise.
There are good times to fire people.
Lord knows that as someone who worked as a corporate HR exec during the height of the restructuring boom in the 80’s and 90’s I’ve fired more people than I can count.… Read the rest
There are some advantages to being at the organizational top.
People below you on the business pyramid are unfailing polite, things sometimes happen on a suggestion and not a request, furniture is nicer and pay is usually greater. Tones are hushed, the carpet is deeper, and pleasantries are often the order not just of the day, but the minute.
Candor – the quality of being frank, open and sincere – is often missing in action.… 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
Just as in sports, some people in business seem to have the knack – and luck – of being in the right place at the right time. But how do they do it, and what can you learn from them that can work for you?
Here are six things you can do to raise your discovery profile:
1. Do great work.… Read the rest
I drove to my client, a company on the Peninsula, past what was formerly Genentech Inc. (acquired by Roche) in South Francisco, on the same day that General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
If I had driven further south I would have passed buildings that formerly housed Bay Networks and 3Com, long gone former or diminished competitors of Cisco, and by a location that was Informix (subsumed by IBM), Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle), and Silicon Graphics , a leader in computer graphics in the mid-1990’s and a recent bankruptcy participant, acquired by Rackable Systems.… Read the rest