The Corporate Social Strategist Can’t Move Fast Enough
It will take more than a few Jedi-mind tricks for change agents and social strategists to convince upper management of the value of social. We are years away from where we need to be in corporate America. Yesterday it was reported that Wal-Mart made 3.5 billion dollars in the third quarter–and most of this revenue was coming from overseas operations. With the state of the American economy, social business might be the trick to speed up progress–unfortunately it’s going to have to be much faster than we can comprehend. As it stands innovation is not happening fast enough.
Be Careful not to Become a Conference Ho
You know the type. You see them on Twitter, Facebook or Plancast plotting out their next 12 conference. You see their Tweets from airports across the globe. Look at me! I’m in Spain! Now I’m in France. Next week I’m speaking in Cabo San Lucas! They are professional conference attendees. They are CEO’s addicted to [...]
How to Manage Employees When They Make Mistakes
I was recently involved with a company (not as an investor) where an embarrassing mistake was made. One of the leaders took a sort of “heads will roll” approach. It’s not my company so I basically stayed out but tried to encourage him to think differently about the “punishment.” I didn’t stick around for the repercussions so [...]
My Life as a CEO (and VC): Chief Psychologist
I’ve had a post in my head for months – maybe longer – about the role of a CEO. It originally appeared on TechCrunch as a guest post but just in case you missed it there. My primary role was “chief psychologist” and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has [...]
The Action, Reaction, Management, Process (ARM) for Social CRM
In the past week or so we covered a few interesting topics with easy to understand visuals (we hope). We looked at the difference between CRM and Social CRM (for those that are new here CRM = customer relationship management) and also explored the evolution of CRM to Social CRM. Today I want to talk [...]
Avoid Decision by Indecision
I recently wrote a piece about how Entrepreneurs Should be Respected, Not Loved. The premise was that some leaders are too enamored with the approbation of their peers than making the tough decisions in the business that are bound to upset some people. The corollary to this rule is “decision by indecision.” This is one [...]
The Agile Board
I recently wrote an article on how to respond to board members between meetings. I basically took some time on a weekend and just hacked out what was on my mind. Two people whom I respect (Nivi Babak and Brad Feld) added commentary that made me want to come back and clarify my thoughts. If [...]
Mr. CIO Check your Premises
When a new CIO steps into office he is given three envelopes in the event he runs into trouble. Inside the 1st envelope a note reads “play it safe”. If that doesn’t work than he opens the 2nd envelope which reads “blame the business unit”. If neither works than he opens up the 3rd envelope [...]
Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?
I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people . A few people have asked me to try and define the perfect startup organization chart. I don’t believe that one exists. Every team configuration is different. But I do have more insight into understanding your startup team. This time I thought I’d try and [...]
Separated from Your Parade
You’ve seen it all in your career, your certain of it. It’s not often that you’re surprised by events or actions taken by Executives or Boards of Directors. Certainly not when you’ve always been a top performer. But there’s always those outliers. Outliers like when you accepted a new job at a new company. A [...]
Study – Distributed Idea Generation Outperforms Team Brainstorming
This has significant managerial implications: if the interactive build-up [of team brainstorming] is not leading to better ideas, an organization might be better off relying on asynchronous idea generation by individuals using, for example, web-based idea management systems. That quote is from a report by three researchers from the INSEAD and Wharton business schools. They [...]
Lord of the Flies – The Company
The story is set in a company you’re all familiar with. There are no adults in control just big people that believe they are adults. It started well, a revolutionary product that changed how people went about their work. But not all that starts well ends well. Two dominant boy-men control the company. We’ll call [...]
Running More Effective Board Meetings at Startups
Like many of you I’ve sat through my fair share of Board Meetings over the past decade. For the most part I’d call them Bored Meetings. The first 7 years I was running them and the past 3 years I’ve been attending them. Most board meetings aren’t as effective as they could be. Everyone has their own [...]
Bring on the Snake Oil Sales person and Mr Know it ALL
As a follow on to Cloud Camp Seattle, I met two particularly distasteful people, Mr. Snake Oil Salesperson and Mr. Know it ALL. Both are doing a disservice to everyone, and here is why these people should not be involved in your cloud computing project. Mr. Snake Oil Sales Person This is a huge problem [...]
