This past weekend, I was coaching at a CEO summit organized by MiLA Capital as well as a couple other venture capital firms. A theme that showed up throughout the weekend was a story of leadership that was driving lonely CEOs to exhaustion, which is one of the reasons they so appreciated this chance to […]
Category: thoughts
The Last Word on Power, by Tracy Goss
Amazon link Tracy Goss is an adherent of Werner Erhard, who developed the est methodology that was later monetized into the Landmark Forum. What I knew of the Landmark Forum seemed pretty dodgy (see this 2003 rant on how I thought it was an evil cult), so I didn’t even want to open this book […]
Changing behavior by changing identity
When you picture yourself five years from now, who will you be? Most of us assume that we will be basically the same as today. We’ll have the same friends, we’ll do the same activities, we’ll make similar decisions as we make today, etc. Now compare yourself to who you were five years ago. Do […]
The Power of Accountability Partners
As we start a new year and a new decade, many people are setting goals and resolutions for themselves as they feel energized by the possibilities as the calendar turns. And yet we all know that our motivation for these goals and resolutions quickly declines, and we often fall back into our old routines by […]
2019 Year in Review
I ended my 2018 Year in Review with the intention that for 2019, “I will stay focused on my priorities of my family and my coaching, and will figure out the rest from there within the remaining capacity that I have.” And that turned out to be a good summary of how I spent my […]
Thinking in Bets, by Annie Duke
Amazon link Annie Duke was a world-class poker player, having won the World Series of Poker as well as other prominent games, who has since shifted to sharing what she learned about decision making at the poker table in talks and workshops. This book is the collection of her wisdom. If you want a summary […]
Changing the Rules to Play the Infinite Game
A client in a recent session identified that they were living their life with a “transactional model” where they did things for the outcome they provided. This is how many high achievers were raised e.g. work hard in school to get good grades to get into a good college, work hard to get good grades […]
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 […]
Bikepacking as a spiritual practice
As I mentioned in my last post, I went on a week-long bikepacking tour along the Lost Coast in Humboldt County a couple weeks ago (pictures here for those interested). I found the bike tour to be a surprisingly spiritual experience, so I wanted to share a bit about my experience. I realize that “spiritual” […]
