Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
Sports are an imperfect analogue.
But like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, analogues and metaphors provide representations that if properly understood can give us insight to the real world – not simply shadows on the cave wall.
So what does this have to do with the most American (as in the United States and Canada – not the rest of the countries in the Americas) of sports, baseball?… Read the rest
IBM founder and CEO Thomas Watson had a sign in his office – and more signs plastered throughout the firm.
Aretha Franklin sang about it in the movies.
Buddha noted “What we think we become.”
So why don’t we think more?
The thought came to mind as I trekked back from a week-long stay at San Francisco’s Camp Mather, a place in the high Sierras near Yosemite.… Read the rest
Unless you’ve been under a rock recently, you know that the topic of Mormonism is hot, and the subject of Mormonism and leadership may be even hotter.
What’s up?
There are things that have put the religion in public view such as the Tony award winning hit musical The Book of Mormon and the series finale after five seasons of Big Love, about a polygamist Mormon family of a husband and his three wives.… Read the rest
There are the hard things to do to be successful in careers and business, and then there are the easy ones that get you along the way as well.
This post is about on the easy ones.
But first an intro story.
My week last week was probably like yours; lost of stuff to do, and perhaps too little time to do it.… Read the rest
The challenge when you’re running a company is to provide context; while short and sweet is great, most of the time it falls flat without some background when you’re laying out direction and mission.
CEO’s know most of the stuff in their heads. They live with the challenges, direction, obstacles, and enablers all the time. I’m sometimes surprised that CEO’s don’t set plates for those things at Thanksgiving as honored guests. … Read the rest
Tech valuations are popping (frothy is the well-used word) in the San Francisco Bay area. And the requirement to have high performing talent to quickly scale and produce a winning product may drive it all.
The scalp price for hiring or retaining top engineers was recently tabbed at $500,000 and the talent acquisition strategies of firms like Facebook includes the purchase of small start-ups only to shut them down and employ the newly acquired talent.… Read the rest