Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
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
The New Year is here, and many of us in North America will note the start of the year with resolutions, a legacy of being informed by the European side of the immigrant family tree. The Romans gave us January 1st as the marker for the new year, and Pope Gregory promoted it with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar , something adopted by the Western / Christian world in 1582 and used as a loose business default calendar globally.… Read the rest
Research supports that networking is the best way for most (people like you, as Richard Nelson Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute fame and I would suggest) to find your next job. It’s estimated that 80% of job openings are unlisted, which means that most jobs will be filled through networking, not tossing a resume into a company’s applicant tracking system or even having coffee with your favorite executive recruiter.… Read the rest
The boss, it turns out is, human.
That can be hard to believe in an age where CEOs can be paid a lot of money and deified at the drop of a hat. But it’s true, and easy to spot when the CEO is younger, less experienced, and front and center of the spotlight. With the pile-on week for 49er’s President Jed York by journalists and fans (and me too) still in process following the firing of 49er head coach Mike Singletary, it helps to remember that Jed York is all of 29 years old.… Read the rest
My twitter friend Hutch Carpenter noted (tweeted actually) that “Quora is the new black” – always a signal that something may become popular – the website provides an interesting mix of questions and answers in a quasi-curated format. Co-founders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever and the rest of the team have created for the moment a site what provides a rich collection of questions and answers on a host of topics.… Read the rest
The San Francisco 49ers fired their head coach Mike Singletary yesterday.
I don’t know Singletary, but have followed his career since 1985 when I lived in Chicago for five years (comprising what I refer to as the longest decade of my life) and he played for the Chicago Bears.
Singletary was an undersized, underpowered linebacker who played with lots of smarts and heart, and it’s no coincidence that the Bears won a Super Bowl and were highly competitive with him on board.… Read the rest