Author: J. Mike Smith

J. Mike Smith is an experienced, highly effective San Francisco-based executive and team coach. Not just “another consultant”, Mike has worked first hand in the roles he coaches, with personal experience working successfully in roles ranging from a front line supervisor to a senior vice president in a variety of companies and environments. Mike’s work coaching business teams is informed and guided by the wisdom and experience of being on teams and working through many of the same challenges and issues the teams he coaches face. As the President and Principal of Back West, Inc., the name of his consulting practice, Mike brings over 30 years of business experience. His work background spans industries including financial services, high tech, biotech, and wholesale distribution. His San Francisco based consulting coaching practice is focused in three areas – executive coaching with individuals, coaching work with teams such as team start-up and team building, and group facilitation and off-site design. More information at http://backwest.com/
Posted on

[Reading Tea Leaves] Candidate Job Fair Suggests Job Market Uptick

As someone who worked with a quantitative asset management firm – Barclays Global Investors –  I know the value of seeing data in terms of broad patterns. But as someone who has worked extensively with the research and development side of biotech, I’ve also learned to note signs and signals by the ones and twos. This is the latter.

BioSpace.com, the country’s leading news and jobs/career web portal for biotech / pharma is hosting a job fair on March 9th, 2010 in South San Francisco from 2-7 PM.… Read the rest

Posted on

[Cherry Tree Chronicles] How to Tell the Truth – and Why You Should

We live in a world of spin: from embellished resumes to downright lies, people seem to have forgotten truth with their honesty manners. It’s hard to know if it’s always been this way, or if it’s changed over time. Certainly George Washington, whose birthday was celebrated last week as a US Federal holiday, would be appalled. George, as the legend goes, was the young man who voluntarily told his father that he had chopped down a cherry tree rather than lie about it.… Read the rest

Posted on

[Coaching Tips] No “I” in Team – Not Even a Team of One

Scott Berkun, whose work I generally like a lot, recently wrote a piece titled Why You Should Be a Team of One. It is a rare miss – a dud, and advice frankly which should be ignored.

Scott has written three books: all are quite good. His most recent, Confessions of a Public Speaker, is particularly good, helpful for someone like me who has 20+ years working with large group facilitation and design when I’m not doing my regular work of coaching execs and team.… Read the rest

Posted on

[High Potential Employees] How Do You Choose the Chosen Few?

The question from my client was common: who do you spend limited resources  for coaching and development of high potential employees? And, even harder, how do you know it’s money well spent?

The  takeaway from working in and around corporations for almost 30 years is that most of the efforts spent on high potential employees – employees who their employer has deemed as having the skills, abilities, and interest to move to more senior positions with the corporation – is a waste.… Read the rest

Posted on

[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 Threats – there 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

Posted on

[CFO Job Hunters Version] What Do Employers Really Want?

One mystery for more senior job hunters is the  question of “What do employers really want?” in terms of backgrounds, skill sets and experience.

Thanks to one executive search person you can get one good answer – particularly if you’re looking fill a Chief Financial Officer role.

Karen Quint of Spencer Stuart addressed the San Francisco chapter of Financial Executives International,  the preeminent association for CFOs and other senior finance executives last month.… Read the rest