A weak tie for me is an email-only or phone-only relationship with someone. The weak ties in your network are important and underrated. Virginia Postrel, in this Forbes article on networks, reminds us that people usually find jobs not through their close friends but through their weak ties. Excerpt:To...
Auren Hoffman posted his slides pdf from a recent SD Forum talk on the value of "soft assets" (knowledge, connections, etc).Its good stuff for anyone in business -- especially if youre young.
The Silicon Valley Junto -- an intellectual discussion society that Chris and I run -- met a few weeks ago around the topic Once Upon a Business...The Role of Storytelling in Leadership, Management, and Entrepreneurship.David Cowan kicked it off with an oral telling of a story he recounted on his...
Listening to the taped version of my speech at the University of Arizona recently, I identified several moments during the Q&A where I could have done better.Reading this quickie with communications guru Michael Sheehan in Harvard Business Review free, Im again reminded that I have spent far too much time...
Wal-Marts "Personal Sustainability Project" for employees, as reported in this NYT article, is fantastic. We all need to cultivate a sense of self-improvement -- we can improve our mind and body -- and I love how Wal-Mart is investing in programs to encourage this thinking among their massive employee pool....
People love to characterize emotion and feelings as toxic to rational, objective decision making. "Be cool and dispassionate," they say. While theres some truth to that, there is also evidence to suggest that emotions are crucial in rational decision making (Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes Error, is an influential proponent...
Continuing my riff on the role of passion in decision making, heres a central tension in any entrepreneurial venture you dont hear talked about much:It demands complete emotional committment to be successful, but youre also told not to have your self-esteem / self-worth too invested in the success or failure...
The Morning News has a great page with tips of the trade for a variety of occupations. Helpful rules of thumb. Favorites excerpted below.Actor Every actor eventually is called upon to act drunk. Most do this by slurring their speech, stumbling around, and perhaps drooling a bit. This is what...
Is the stuff that ought to work, but doesnt.So says GMU economist Arnold Kling in this interesting TCS Daily article. Kling hits on something I think a lot about which is how common and repetitive the "best practices" of business are. Its hard to find original insights, even if the...
Jason Mendelson recalls this quote: "I love backing first time CEOs because they don’t know what they cant do and never limit themselves."Reminds me of a conversation I had with Auren Hoffman a couple weeks ago. We theorized the best time to start a company was around age 27. On...
One of the trickiest things for me to figure out is when I can generalize from a specific experience versus dismissing it as an outlayer. Take a CEO. He starts his first company. He employs certain management techniques, strategies, and protocols. The company is wildly successful. He moves on...
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, is a brilliant marketing exec. In this short, punchy interview in Forbes, he shares his secrets, which I found interesting. A sampling: Always pitch the bigger picture. Salesforce.com was about "the end of software," not customer relationship management software or software as a service....
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