You Can’t Teach a Cat How to Bark, But You Might be Able to Teach it How to Walk on its Hind Legs My co-founder George and I have had this saying for a while. Cats don’t bark. They can’t. Never will. They also don’t usually walk on their hind legs in the wild, but some of them, after some training, could probably be taught to do so. Working with people on career evolution sometimes follows that same path. Lots of the time, an employee’s career evolution is natural and goes well. They’re playing to their strengths, in their sweet spot, progressing along nicely. But often that’s not the case. And it goes both ways. Some employees want something different. …
Category
Business
Learning Through Extremes, or Shifting Gears part II
OnlyOnce is 8 years old this week, which is hard to believe. So it is fitting that I got halfway through a new post this morning, then a little alarm bell went off in my head that I had written something similar before. The topic is around moderation versus extremes. I first wrote about this topic in 2005 in a post called Shifting Gears but I have thought about it more recently in a different way. Instead of phrasing this as a struggle between “Meden Agan,” which is Greek for “everything in moderation,” and “Gor oder gornischt,” which is Yiddish for “all or nothing,” I’d like to focus here on the value of occasionally going to an extreme. And that…
Skip-Level Meetings
I was talking to a CEO the other day who believed it was “wrong” (literally, his word) to meet directly 1:1 with people in the organization who did not report to him. I’ve heard from other CEOs in the past that they’re casual or informal or sporadic about this practice, but I’ve never heard someone articulate before that they actively stayed away from it. The CEO in question’s feeling was that these meetings, which I call Skip-Level Meetings, disempowers managers. I couldn’t disagree more. I have found Skip-Level Meetings to be an indispensable part of my management and leadership routine and have done them for years. If your culture is set up such that you as CEO can’t interact directly…
Book Short: Required Reading, Part II
Book Short: Required Reading, Part II Every once in a while, a business book nails it from all levels. Well written, practical, broadly applicable to any size or type of organization, full of good examples, full of practical tables and checklists. The Leadership Pipeline, which I wrote about here over six years ago, is one of those books — it lays out in great and clear detail a framework for understanding the transition from one level to another in an organization and how work behaviors must change in order for a person to succeed during and on the other side of that transition. In an organization like Return Path‘s which is rapidly expanding and promoting people regularly, this is critical. …
The Art of the Quest
Jim Collins, in both Good to Great and Built to Last talked about the BHAG – the Big, Hairy Audacious Goal – as one of the drivers of companies to achieve excellence. Perhaps that’s true, especially if those goals are singular enough and simplified enough for an entire company of 100-1000-10000 employees to rally around. I have also observed over the years that both star performers and strong leaders drive themselves by setting large goals. Sometimes they are Hairy or Audacious. Sometimes they are just Big. I suppose sometimes they are all three. Regardless, I think successfully managing to and accomplishing large personal goals is a sign of a person who is driven to be an achiever in life –…
Alter Ego
Alter Ego A couple people have asked me recently how I work with an Executive Assistant, what value that person provides, and even questioned the value of having that position in the company in an era where almost everything can be done in self-service, lightweight ways. At my old company (in the 90s), each VP-level person and up had a dedicated assistant – the world certainly doesn’t require that level of support any more. In our case, Andrea has other tasks for the company that take up about half of her time. I happen to have the absolute best, world class role model assistant in Andrea, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with for almost seven years now (which…
A Great American Experience
A Great American Experience President Obama signed into law today a bill called the JOBS Act. I haven’t read the full text of the law, but based on abstracts, my opinion of the JOBS Act is that it’s great for the startup community, but even greater for growth companies. I am less familiar with the Crowdsourcing components of the bill, but certainly that will make it easier for pure startups to attract micro capital. The Sarbanes-Oxley reforms that make it easier and less costly to go through an IPO and be a public company will really enable growth companies like Return Path and many others in the Internet industry to go public a little earlier and with less difficulty. Tapping…
Scaling Me
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…
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…