Given the key role Product Managers play in creating the environment for their teams… what must they do to avoid the bell curve of mediocre products that unfortunately are the norm? I shared my perspective as the guest speaker at the SVPMA (Sept 3, 2014) based on my own experiences and other authors/speakers that I…
Tag: leadership
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. James Stockdale in conversation with Jim Collins (In Good to Great) Quote was referenced in a great…
A new lens on Myers-Briggs
As part of my leadership course at UC Berkeley I recently took a hybrid self-assessment, facilitated by CPP, which combines the power of Myers-Briggs’ MBTI with a less well known assessment called FIRO-B. First introduced by William Schutz in 1958, the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO), analyzes the dimensions of Inclusion, Control and Affection. It…
Active Inertia in Business
In the article Why Good Companies Go Bad, Donald Sull outlines why major change in large organizations is so difficult. Ironically in most cases the very elements that enabled the business to initially scale and succeed turn into what holds the company back. Sull refers to these forces as “Active Inertia”. What holds back change…
Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Reflecting on Daniel Goleman’s writings on Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and how self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills impact leadership.
Evidence-Based Management
I recently read the article Evidence-Based Management (HBR Jan 06) which outlines an emerging movement which applies the scientific approach long used in medicine to the practice of management. A number of factors inhibit managers’ ability to make good decisions including: specialty bias (e.g. marketers tend to recommend marketing as a solution) hype (e.g. managers…
Mayfield on the “End of Process”
Ross Mayfield posted a facinating article on how successful decentralization will only come thru less process and more openness. No amount of process in a large company is going to enable the rapid information sharing that is needed in a large organization. Only tools like wikis ang blogs enable that kind of communication. Speaking from…
Learning about Bain & Company…
This morning I’m preparing for my marketing class on Saturday and decided I’d look into eBay’s new Marketplace president, John Donahoe’s background. So I started with Bain & Company where he was their Worldwide Managing Director. Here are some articles that jumped out at me… The decision driven organization (Paul Rogers, Bain & Company)Several points…