Scaling Me Two things have come up over the last couple years for me that are frustrations for me as a CEO of a high growth company. These are both people related — an area that’s always been the cornerstone of my leadership patterns. That probably makes them even more frustrating. Frustration 1: Not knowing if I can completely trust the feedback I get from deep in the organization. I’ve always relied on direct interactions with junior staff and personal observation and data collection in order to get a feel for what’s going on. But a couple times lately, people had been admonishing me (for the first time) when I’ve relayed feedback with comments like, “of course you heard that…
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Business
Book Short: Awesome Title, So-So Book
Book Short: Awesome Title, So-So Book Strategy and the Fat Smoker (book, Kindle), by David Maister, was a book that had me completely riveted in the first few chapters, then completely lost me for the rest. That was a shame. It might be worth reading it just for the beginning, though I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly recommend the purchase just for that. The concept (as well as the title) is fantastic. As the author says in the first words of the introduction: We often (or even usually) know what we should be doing in both personal and professional life. We also know why we should be doing it and (often) how to do it. Figuring all that out is…
What Separates Good Teams from Bad Teams?
What Separates Good Teams from Bad Teams? Every once in a while, I have a conversation that forces me to distill an idea to a sound bite – those frequently become blog posts. Many happen with members of my team at Return Path, or my friend Matt on our Saturday morning runs, or my Dad or Mom, or Mariquita. This one happened at dinner the other night with Mariquita and my in-laws Rick and Carmen. The subject came up about managing a senior team, and different iterations of teams I’ve managed over the years. And the specific question we posed was “What are the most significant characteristics that separate good teams from bad teams?” Here’s where the conversation went…“I believe…
Canary in a Coal Mine
Canary in a Coal Mine From Wiktionary: An allusion to caged canaries mining workers would carry down into the tunnels with them. If dangerous gases such as methane or carbon monoxide leaked into the mine-shaft, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miners. Perhaps not the best analogy in the world, but I had an observation recently as we took on a massive new client: over the years, Return Path has had a handful of “bellwether” clients that I’ve jokingly referred to as the canaries in our proverbial coal mine. In the really early days of the business, it was eBay. When we first started working with Email Service Providers, it was the old DoubleClick. A couple years…
Book Short (and great concept): Moments of Truth
Book Short (and great concept): Moments of Truth TouchPoints: Creating Powerdul Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments, by Douglas Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup Corporation, and Mette Norgaard (book, kindle), is a very good nugget of an idea wrapped in lots of other good, though only loosely connected management advice around self awareness and communication — something I’m increasingly finding in business books these days. It’s a very short book. I read it on the Kindle, so I don’t know how many pages it is or the size of the font, but it was only 2900 kindles (or whatever you call a unit on the device) and only took a few Metro North train rides to finish. It’s…
Just Say No
Just Say No An OnlyOnce reader submitted this story to me a couple months ago: Went to a small, high-end restaurant last night. There were ~10 people there when our party of 9 arrived. Another group of 10 arrived soon after – amusingly, the chef declined to allow them to be seated. I asked him why afterwards – he turned down at least $1,000 worth of business. (like 30% of what he could have made that night). His answer : Our quality would have suffered, and then they would have walked away thinking less of us. Wow. What a revolutionary idea. Turning down money in light of maintaining your reputation and quality of service. I’ve had this experience before —…
Book Short: Steve Jobs and Lessons for CEOs and Founders
Book Short: Steve Jobs and Lessons for CEOs and Founders First, if you work in the internet, grew up during the rise of the PC, or are an avid consumer of Apple products, read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs (book, kindle). It’s long but well worth it. I know much has been written about the subject and the book, so I won’t be long or formal, but here are the things that struck me from my perspective as a founder and CEO, many taken from specific passages from the book: In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important. Man is that ever true. I’ve come up with some…
The Best Laid Plans, Part IV
The Best Laid Plans, IV I have had a bunch of good comments from readers about the three posts in this series about creating strategic plans (input phase, analysis phase, output phase). Many of them are leading me to write a fourth post in the series, one about how to make sure the result of the plan isn’t shelfware, but flawless execution. There’s a bit of middleware that has to happen between the completion of the strategic plan and the work getting done, and that is an operating plan. In my observation over the years, this is where most companies explode. They have good ideas and capable workers, just no cohesive way to organize and contextualize the work. There are…
What Makes an Awesome Board Member
What Makes an Awesome Board Member (This post was requested by my long-time Board member Brad Feld and is also running concurrently on his blog today) I’ve written a bunch of posts over the years about how I manage my Board at Return Path. And I think part of having awesome Board members is managing them well – giving transparent information, well organized, with enough lead time before a meeting; running great and engaging meetings; mixing social time with business time; and being a Board member yourself at some other organization so you see the other side of the equation. All those topics are covered in more detail in the following posts: Why I Love My Board, Part II, The…
The Best Laid Plans, Part III
The Best Laid Plans, Part III Once you’ve finished the Input Phase and the Analysis Phase of producing your strategic plan, you’re ready for the final Output Phase, which goes something like this: Vision articulation. Get it right for yourself first. You should be able to answer “where do we want to be in three years?” in 25 words or less. Roadmap from today. Make sure to lay out clearly what things need to happen to get from where you are today to where you want to be. The sooner-in stuff needs to be much clearer than the further out stuff. Resource Requirements. Identify the things you will need to get there, and the timing of those needs – More…
Is It Normal?
A friend who is a newly promoted CEO just wrote me and asked me this: I’m having a sort of guilt complex. Let me explain. I’ve set up a bunch of positions, which people are grooving into. We just completed our budget for our new fiscal year, probably faster and easier than ever before. Sales are going really, really well. BUT, despite all of this, I feel more relaxed than I have in years. And I am struggling with that. I’m relaxed because we seem out in front of stuff, I’ve reduced my span of control from a dozen direct reports to four. Things are progressing in good ways. I also have time now that I’ve not had in ages…