In Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin, he talks about the concept of leaning into your work in order to be successful. He argues that a change in posture, leaning in vs. standing by, is one way to tell the linchpins (irreplaceable people in an organization) from the employees. I love this concept because it [...]
Archive for the ‘Random Musings’ Category
5 tools to eliminate meaningless meetings
February 23rd, 2010
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Being busy is not being productive. This much is clear. But let’s go one step further. Meetings are not communicating. They’re certainly not an effective form of communicating. Meetings are time intensive, disruptive and often counter-productive. They tend to be stilted, keep people from expressing their true feelings and [...]
Location and Lifestyle Design
January 22nd, 2010
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In a recent post, Andrew Hyde announced his location-based suicide. Recent stalking incidents left him believing that the personal safety and privacy risks of location sharing outweigh the benefits. It’s a common concern that I hear among non-early adopters and particularly women – and for good reason. There are people out there that will use this information [...]
What if there was no one to tell you no?
January 16th, 2010
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What if there was no one to tell you no? How would that change your job? What would you different? What if the way things ran in your business/department/division was your call? What if there wasn’t the excuse of someone telling you no to hold you back. What would you [...]
Flying the Plane
January 6th, 2010
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I spend a lot of time on airplanes lately. My Foursquare mayorship of John Wayne airport can attest to that. Every time I walk by the cockpit I’m amazed at the instruments and dashboards that pilots deal with on an everyday basis. It struck me again yesterday while I was sitting in a meeting with [...]
Can you spot the solution?
December 30th, 2009
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Criticizing is easy. All you have to do is simply point out what you don’t like. “I don’t like this, I don’t like that. Go back and try it again.” All easy to say. The problem with criticism is that it doesn’t go far enough. Plain criticism fails because it only points out what you [...]
Don’t let the coffee run out
December 28th, 2009
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When I was 15 I learned a valuable lesson. I worked at a local convenience store on the weekends while in high school for some extra spending cash. On Sundays I had to open the store at 4am and stay until 2pm when the owner would arrive to relieve me. Since then, I’ve never believed [...]
Watering Down
December 25th, 2009
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Watering down. It’s what happens to great concepts once they enter the beauracratic world of a corporation. A concept goes from revolutionary and unlike anything other to just another boring product.
It’s what happens when you get too many cooks in the kitchen. It’s what happens when every executive wants a piece of ownership in a [...]
Belief and walking away from $500 million
December 22nd, 2009
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The big news on the Web is Google’s reported $500 million offer that Yelp! turned down. The deal itself is of less interest to me-what is really compelling is the idea that Yelp! executives walked away. It’s really, really hard to walk away from a “sure thing” in anything, much less a $500 million exit. [...]
How Many Trade-Offs Can You Afford?
December 12th, 2009
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Trade offs. We’re asked to evaluate and make trade offs everyday. Particularly when it comes to things that are hard. Building a web site. Creating advertising. Starting a new public relations campaign. Delighting the customer. All hard tasks, all made harder by the constant need to make trade offs. [...]
