Amazon link I had heard of the work of Gay and Katie Hendricks, including Gay’s idea of the Zone of Genius (as opposed to the Zones of Excellence or Competence that most of us spend our lives in) or Katie’s idea of integrity as energetic wholeness ((which I heard described by Jim Dethmer). So when […]
Category: generalist
Thinking in Systems, by Donella Meadows
Amazon link This is a remarkably readable introduction to systems thinking, a method to understand the inherent behavior of a system, and design appropriate interventions to change what the system is doing. Meadows starts by defining a system as “an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. … […]
How to be a great Chief of Staff in tech
I spent almost seven years at Google as the Chief of Staff to Jerry Dischler, the product VP of the Search Ads team (and a few other teams by the end of my tenure), so new Chiefs of Staff at Google were often directed my way to learn from my experience. As the Chief of […]
My Coaching Journey (so far)
I recently realized I announced my recent career transition on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and have even been interviewed about it on the Corporate School Dropout podcast, but somehow forgot to talk about it on my own blog. Oops. The summary is that I left Google in July after working there for almost 11 years, to […]
Introduction 2018, and a story of personal growth
(n.b. This was written in November 2018. More recent updates include my journey into coaching and my annual year in review posts). I like having a page on this blog to explicitly introduce myself, even though you can get a sense of who I am from reading the various posts and browsing the archives. I […]
Thinking like a Futurist with Jane McGonigal
[n.b. I added a MailChimp subscription link to the sidebar if you want to get email notifications of posts rather than depending on RSS, Facebook or Twitter to see when I update] I’ve been a fan of Jane McGonigal for a decade, after being introduced to her via her Cruel 2 B Kind game in […]
Choosing Utility over Truth
I have previously discussed on this blog my skepticism about the existence of a single Truth. I’ve been reminded of that in several recent conversations, so I thought I’d revisit that idea again. The most recent example was a conversation on Facebook where a friend linked to a debunking of learning styles, showing that students […]
Design thinking for the self
As you can probably tell from recent posts on gratitude, generosity, and choosing action, I have been thinking a lot about the kind of person I want to be recently. This is partly inspired by me co-leading a session at Up to All of Us on how to change the world by first changing yourself. […]
Be the change
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Meditations by Marcus Aurelius I have been thinking about personal responsibility, and the idea of starting change with oneself. This is continuing the thinking of my recent post about updating our mental software. Some background: I started […]
Pros and cons of thinking systemically
One of the challenges I have in trying to figure out how to effect change (as discussed in my last post) is that I can’t figure out where to start. And part of the reason for that is that I tend to have a systemic top-level way of thinking about situations. So I see these […]
