Inability Of Organizations To Manage "The Flow" Of Talent Management
The flow, a concept developed by one of my favorite psychologists, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, matches the popular performance versus potential matrix that many managers use to evaluate and calibrate their employees. For people to be in the flow they need to be somewhere in the middle moving diagonally up. Ideally, this is how employees should progress […]
A Design Lesson: Customers Don’t Remember Everything They Experience
My brother is an ophthalmologist in a small town in India. In his private practice, patients have two options to see him: either take an appointment or walk in. Most patients don’t take an appointment due to a variety of cultural and logistics reasons and prefer to walk in. These patients invariably have to wait […]
What job are people hiring your product to do?
I am a product guy, dating back to my days as a design student at Stanford. I’ve been a fan of Clay Christensen ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” and even interviewed him for the student newspaper when I was a Harvard Business School student. Which is why I’m shocked that I hadn’t heard of Clay’s […]
The Right and Wrong Ways To Use Scarcity in Marketing
Nir Eyal is one of the top minds in applying psychology to the startup world. His posts are a must-read, and he’s also a nice guy. My only complaint is that I foolishly went barefoot running with him and developed a foot problem that kept me on a cane for months (I had a problem […]
How Do You Know A VC Is Interested?
“He told us he was going to fund us,” shouts the happy entrepreneur into my ear. I’m sure he dialed me as soon as he got into the car. “He’s not going to fund you,” I say calmly, “The VCs always say that. It doesn’t mean anything.” A lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time […]
Microsoft People vs. Apple People
There are Microsoft people and Apple people.Microsoft people want every option, and can’t imagine why others would find the surfeit of choices intimidating or annoying.In the parlance of psychology, they are “optimizers”.Apple people want a simple, ele…
Everyone Feels Like An Imposter
I had the good fortune of being allowed to be a mentor at the Unreasonable Institute this year. If you ever get the chance, it’s something you should definitely do. In my two days at the institute, I got to meet a bunch of amazing people who are maki…
Rewards and the Motivation Paradox
I’m finally getting around to reading Daniel Pink’s “Drive.” I had held off for a long time, figuring that I didn’t need to read someone else’s rehashing of Deci, since I’d already read the source material. I was wrong. Pink does a great job of synthesizing a number of different strands, including behavioral economics, Deci’s […]
The Dangers of Unrealistic Wallet Image
Every once in a while, I come across a blog post that suddenly crystallizes something I’ve always known but never consciously realized. This week, it was this post by Pasha Sasulka, drawing the analogy between the issues some women have with body image with the issues men have with wallet image: “I know how it […]
