Good CEO Habits: Proactively Update Your Board at the End of Every Quarter
I am surprised by how many startup CEOs leave the board hanging at the end of the quarter. As a CEO my rule of thumb was that if a board member ever asked me about the quarter then I’d failed in being sufficiently proactive in communications. In tight quarters I’d send a revised forecast about […]
Communications Lessons from Mayor Pete
Whenever I have the chance to watch a big league politician at work, I always try to study their communications skills in an effort to learn from the best. In a previous post, I presented what I learned watching Congresswoman Jackie Speier work a room, a pretty amazing sight, in The Introvert’s Guide to Glad-Handing. […]
Write Actionable Emails! (aka, If You’re Going to Make a Proposal, Make One!)
As CEO of a company, I can’t tell you the number of times, I get emails like this: Dave, I know our policy is that we don’t pay both the salesreps their high-rate commissions on low-profit, one-of items, but we ended up doing a $50K/year pass-along storage fee for Acme, because they are managing a […]
Speaking of India: Five Lessons on India-Based Product Development
One of the interesting new challenges I faced when I joined Host Analytics about 5 years ago was working with an offshore development team in India. Host was originally co-founded in both the US and India, so literally from inception we had employees in both places. While this has proven to be a huge advantage […]
Blocking the End Run: Eleven Words to Reduce Politics in Your Organization
People are people. Sometimes they’re conflict averse and just not comfortable saying certain things to their peers. Sometimes they don’t like them and are actively trying to undermine them. Sometimes they’re in a completely functional relationship, but have been too darn busy to talk. So when this happens, how do you — as a manager […]
Dear Marketing: Stop Putting the Template Over the Story
I’ve always thought that if marketers wrote newspapers, the famous New York Times headline of August 8, 1974 would have looked like this: Instead of how it actually looked, which was: What’s the difference? While both of the above presentations are structured, the newspaper doesn’t let the template get in the way of story. The […]
Unicorn Tears, Beyond Ultimate, and the Silicon Valley Hype Mentality
Back in the day we working on a press release and I was a CMO. Me: “Somebody, get Randy (the PR director) in here.” Me: “Randy, what is this press release calling our new offering the ultimate in business intelligence?” Randy: “Yes and the problem is?” Me: “The problem is it’s not the ultimate, it’s […]
I Don’t Want to Talk to You Anymore
One time, back in the day at Business Objects, we were all flying back from Paris to San Francisco, when the plane pulled ten feet back from the gate and then stopped. The pilot announced that we were taking a delay of several hours. Frustrated, one of our board members, a very polished, powerful, statuesque […]
Stop Making the #1 Mistake in Presentations
Most people condemn themselves at the 5th second of the presentation creation process by double-clicking on PowerPoint and then hitting “open.”
Career Advice: Simplifiers Go Far, Complexifiers Get Stuck
“If you can’t explain it to a six year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” – Albert Einstein There are two types of people in business: Simplifiers: who make complex things simple Complexifiers: who make simple things complex Quick joke Question: What does a complexifier call a simplifier? Answer: “Boss.” Somewhere, somehow, some people decided that in […]
