leadership
As a leader, it's easy to get sucked into filling your days with meetings focused on the work, and not investing time in taking care of your people. Don't let this happen -- it reminds me of the personal finance concept of "Pay yourself first&
leadership
The difference between watching 5 year olds and professionals play soccer is a powerful illustration of what organizations feel like as they mature -- early startups tend to have people swarm every issue, like little kids playing "magnet ball", while mature organizations has clear responsibilities and expectations. I
leadership
Moving up the org chart from individual contributor to team leader, to more senior management jobs, and eventually into senior leadership (executive leadership) isn't trivial. Most people don't get a lot of education or training on how to be great leaders and managers. As you move
miscellaneous
I used to help my grandfather work on old cars -- he was a telecommunications engineer who supported NASA on the Apollo missions, who could quickly learn how to take apart, and put back together pretty much anything. When my father was in college, he had an old beat up
leadership
You've heard people say that multi-tasking is inefficient, and everyone thinks they're good at it, but they're really not. That's a powerful concept to remember, as you try to work through your day, but many people don't try to influence
agile
When you're planning to launch a big new program (or other big effort) at work, it's valuable to step back and clarify, very succinctly the purpose and scope of this new thing. It's easy early on when planning a big new thing to think
leadership
Organizations and teams often need to mature from one central leader to several empowered leaders. Sometimes that's a founder delegating real authority and ownership (not just helpers who are doing what the founder tells them to do). Sometimes it's a team within a bigger organization that
books
It's not much fun to carve out time to write things down about who can do what -- there are many more fun things leaders can do. But if you don't invest the time in that, then the people who work for you, and colleagues outside
books
A friend and mentor of mine brought me two big boxes of books a while back, which I appreciated, and I asked him about what the catalyst was for him to give them away. He explained that he realized, based on his age (60s) and the number of books he
books
I've recently been reading a great book (with a not so great title, as I think its value is much broader than just career reflection) called Finding a Job You Can Love, which was written way back in the stone age of 1999. It's written from
investing
I'm loving Ramit Sethi's new Netflix series How to Get Rich, where he helps people in very different financial situations better understand money, and develop a plan to mature. His style of irreverence and humor makes learning personal finance much more fun than usual, and I
agile
There are so many great systems out there on how to connect strategic planning to tactical operations, to ensure that strategic plans don't become shelfware (get put on a shelf and ignored). I'm a big fan of lots of thought leaders in this space, including Cal