When I started my first company back in 2007, I used to joke that my brother made me do it. I had a young family and a new baby, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to take the entrepreneurial leap. So my brother and I made a bet. I’d put my resume on a … Read more
I used to own a house that began construction in 1896 and wasn’t finished until 1902. From what I understand, around 50 men worked on it five, six, and sometimes seven days a week. My current house is bigger. It took about four months to build with a team of around eight people. I’ve been … Read more
What if your team isn’t confused about the direction? What if they just don’t believe in it? I’ve been thinking about that lately when it comes to the Vision/Traction Organizer. When the V/TO isn’t landing with the team, I think our instinct is often to assume we have a communication problem. Maybe we haven’t talked … Read more
I’ve been rereading Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. In the newer edition, they build on the Hedgehog Concept that Collins introduced in Good to Great and make a distinction I hadn’t spent much time thinking about before. They describe two kinds of hedgehogs: content hedgehogs and process hedgehogs. A content … Read more
Twenty-seven years ago, I was sitting in an electronics engineering lab staring at a screen full of static. Somewhere inside all that noise was the information I actually needed. The problem was, I couldn’t see it until I filtered everything else out. Years later, I realized I had created the same problem for myself running … Read more
I’ve spent a lot of my career watching entrepreneurs wait for certainty. Sometimes it’s around a hire. Sometimes it’s an investment or an idea they’re not quite ready to put into the world. I understand the instinct. Nobody wants to make the wrong call. But the entrepreneurs who tend to get what they want seem … Read more
