Send to Kindle Meetings suck – my tips to make your meetings better (or at least less worse) [not sure that sentence even makes sense, but I liked the ring of it] I hate meetings. I wish I didn’t talk as much as I did. I waste too much time. And these are [...]
Send to Kindle Build your own personal advisory board In a lot of people’s minds, entrepreneurs and innovators often stand out as super-individuals; ones who had a vision and just made it happen all on their own, through sheer determination and force of spirit. It’s easy to get caught up in that mindset and [...]
Send to Kindle Happy Valentines Day! First a quick personal update, and then on to the good stuff I have been absent the last few weeks – quiet on twitter, behind on email, and missing on my blog. I am working furiously to launch an MVP of my first leadership tool (and I [...]
Send to Kindle Becoming a Manager As I’ve said before on this blog: when I started my career, it was never my intention to become a manager. I always wanted to be a software engineer (and one day an architect or principal engineer), and I worked really hard to deepened my technical knowledge as I [...]
Send to Kindle Every year I become a better manager. As time goes I get better and better (just like a great bottle of wine). As I reflect on my growth, one of the more shocking lessons was learning to how it important it was to build relationships with my peers. In big companies, your performance [...]
Send to Kindle The last post on networking seemed to be a hit, and this is another great one to go with it. The values of personal relationships are obvious, but sometimes when making those connections can be hard. Or we make them and then fail to cultivate them. One way to help you build [...]
Send to Kindle Who doesn’t want to be more productive? I have the tendency to forget things if I don’t write them down, so it is super important to me that I have a system to manage all the balls in the air. This need has become more pronounced as I become responsible for more [...]
Send to Kindle I am shy and introverted and the thought of going out with the intention of meeting other people, starting conversations with strangers, and making small talk is one of the activities I dread most. I can’t deal with silence (which makes me seem chatty and it is really just the fact [...]
Send to Kindle In 2006, I was part of a team that was presenting to VCs to raise money for our startup, and those meetings were some of the most stressful in my career. I get nervous when I have to present in front of a group, and this is especially true when I’m speaking [...]
Send to Kindle Taking Notes One thing that drives me crazy is when people ask me for a meeting, and then arrive at my office, ask me lots of questions (which I patiently answer), and then leave without taking a single note. Inevitably, I will get an email from them a few weeks later asking [...]