Field notes on product strategy, scaling teams, and the calls that separate breakthrough leaders from busy ones.
57 posts
Leadership/Team/Tips and Tricks
Failures of leadership are bad for both the leader, their employees, and the company. Luckily there are skills that leaders can improve on, that yield immediate benefits. To improve your leadership skills, do a survey of these 8 areas, and see what quick wins you can get. Jot down a few notes on ways to […]
Inspiring Peak Performance/People/Team/Tips and Tricks
1. Work that Matters Is your team mission-driven? Can your team answer what the company is trying to achieve and how they get there? At my first startup, I had an offsite where I wrote questions about the company on index cards. I had my developers each pull an index card and respond as if […]
Leadership/Operating Rhythm/Performance/Team
Remote teams are here to stay. I have been leading distributed product dev teams since 2001. Here are 10 leadership tips on how to optimize your remote team. Learn how often to meet face to face, and when to not meet at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq5C3lz-0fw Summary 1️⃣ Think through the rhythm of the team. What needs […]
Entrepreneurship/Tips and Tricks
Getting my nails done is a newfound obsession of mine. It feels like a girly, guilty pleasure, and is something I enjoy doing to spend time with my daughters. This weekend, it was the last place I thought I would find inspiration for running my own business. But, small business owners can teach us all a lot about how to interact with the key driver of our business success, our customers.
Impact Measurement/Performance/Team/Tips and Tricks
Making incremental progress towards a long-term goal often goes without notice. However, building a pattern of consistently communicating about progress can both motivate your team as well as give others visibility into your team's successes. These short-term wins can anchor the change you are trying to work towards. A Simple Example of Capturing Short-Term Wins […]
Entrepreneurship/Passion/Personal Why
On a cross-country flight to San Francisco when my girls were 6 and 9 years old, my laptop battery died. I put aside the work I planned to finish, and I started reflecting on how my path as an entrepreneur might influence my daughters. Since they were so young, they only saw my […]
Entrepreneurship/Passion/Personal Why
When aspiring entrepreneurs ask me when is the right time to raise money, my answer always is, “Bootstrap as long as you can, until the lack of capital slows down your growth.” Once you start the money hunt, the amount of time you can spend building your business goes down significantly. Especially if you are […]
Building a rock star technology team is often a key ingredient to a successful startup. Once this seed team is built, and your company is gaining traction, it is critical to retain the stars on the team. Long ago, my good friend and entrepreneur from Just Enough HR and I put on a seminar on how to […]
Entrepreneurship/People/Scaling Yourself/Team
I recently went to a talk by @mikeonads about Adserving and Scalability. I went prepared to hear about the technical bits of scaling and to do a compare/contrast of some of the challenges that the ad industry faces versus high-volume search (where I have been spending most of my cycles lately.) Surprisingly, Mike did not lead with that. […]
