I love Slack. From a collaboration perspective, I wish it’d been around a long time ago. But it’s contributing to an environment where everyone believes they have the right to disturb everyone else’s work and expect immediate responses. To be fair, I’ve seen email used the same way, with senior managers especially guilty of expecting […]
The grass is greener where you water it
The grass may *look* greener on the other side, but the truth is it’s greener where you water it. And that’s the difference between the peddlers of vision, and those that show you the vision AND the work you need to do to make it real.
The best leaders on your team may be ignoring your KPIs
When you’re evaluating leadership potential in your team, remember that all the metrics you have are proxy metrics. You can’t easily evaluate such a complex concept as leadership. If you’ve assigned them metrics, or SMART (spare me) objectives, again you’re measuring proxy. The best leaders go beyond them and do the bigger right thing. You […]
“Employees First” isn’t the path to a successful business
Business Half-Truth #2: Look after your employees first. I’ve seen too many turn this into making customers a distant second (or third). Yes, team is important. And if you treat your team as an investment, rather than a cost, then your business should reap rewards. But “employees first” works well ONLY IF you have a […]
Succeeding at school may be harming your entrepreneurial career
There’s a reason that many successful business starters didn’t have sparkling academic careers, and why a lot of people who shone at school failed at startups. If you’re an academic success at school, you become conditioned to prize being right and fear being wrong. And being right is definitely a good thing. But over time, […]