Scott Berkun just posted about situations in life where good data is impossible, which reminded me of a quote I’ve been meaning to share. I once went to a talk by Bob Sutton where he cited a quote by Andy Grove, CEO of Intel: “I think it is very important for you to do two […]
Category: management
Call your shot
Babe Ruth pointing to the stands, and then hitting a home run. Joe Namath guaranteeing a Super Bowl victory despite being an 18-point underdog, and then going out and winning it. There’s something magical about calling your shot – telling people you’re going to do something impressive and then doing it. Even in the workplace, […]
Who is your audience?
One of the broader points that I don’t know if I made clearly in my last post is that effective communication depends not only on the message you are delivering, but also on the audience which the message is targeting. In the case of writing a resume, you have to remember that you are targeting […]
How to write a resume
I’ve written the same email five times in the last several months giving friends advice on how to write their resume, so I figured it was time for me to package it into a blog post that I could then just link to when needed. Assume this is my response to somebody with a few […]
Management Innovation Exchange
The Management Innovation Exchange (aka MIX) looks like an interesting project. It’s a collaboration between McKinsey, London Business School and a couple companies like Dell, with the idea being to open source ideas about management. It’s unclear yet whether it will attract a critical mass of community to discuss ideas (so far, the curation looks […]
Trade-Off, by Kevin Maney
Amazon link Trade-Off is a book which explores a simple, but useful, way to frame the world. Kevin Maney plots products along two dimensions, fidelity and convenience, and then spends the rest of the book discussing how products end up in different places on that graph, from the “fidelity belly” to the “fidelity mirage” Fidelity […]
Chief Culture Officer, by Grant McCracken
Amazon link I have been a fan of Grant McCracken’s for several years now, so I was eagerly awaiting his new book, Chief Culture Officer. Note that I may be slightly biased in this review, as Grant mentions me in the book as a potential CCO candidate. Chief Culture Officer is McCracken’s manifesto of how […]
Coaching and feedback
In my last post, I talked about getting the reps to improve oneself on desired skills. But it’s difficult to make the time for practice, especially for deliberate practice where we are always dancing on the edge of failure. And I think that’s where I think Coyle’s observation that coaching is an integral part of […]
Drive, by Daniel Pink
Drive book website Amazon link I really liked Pink’s TED talk on the “surprising science of motivation” where he says “There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does”. In particular, the compensation and motivation strategies currently used by businesses have been shown to undermine motivation rather than enhance it. So I’ve been […]
The Design of Business, by Roger Martin
Amazon link I’m not sure where I heard about this book, but the subtitle, “Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage”, pretty much sold me on at least checking it out, since I’m interested in both design and management. So I got it from the library and read it. Martin frames business as operating […]
