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Business

More Than 1/3 of Your Life

More Than 1/3 of Your Life When I was a kid, so my parents tell me, I used to watch a lot of TV. For some reason, all those episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Dallas still have a place in my brain, right next to lyrics from 70s and 80s songs and movies. I also tend to remember TV commercials, which are even more useless (not that JR Ewing or Ferris Beuller had all that many valuable life lessons to impart).  Anyway, I remember some commercial for some local mattress company which started out with the booming voiceover, “You spend 1/3 of your life in bed — why not enjoy that time and be as comfortable as you can be?”…

Outrunning the Bear

Outrunning the Bear Did you ever hear the joke about outrunning the bear?  It goes something like this: Two friends are in the woods, having a picnic.  They spot a bear running at them.  One friend gets up and starts running away from the bear.  The other friend opens his backpack, takes out his running shoes, changes out of his hiking boots, and starts stretching. “Are you crazy?” the first friend shouts, looking over his shoulder as the bear closes in on his friend.  “You can’t outrun a bear!” “I don’t have to outrun the bear,” said the second friend.  “I only have to outrun you.” Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in doing something absolutely well as opposed…

Beyond Policy

Beyond Policy Policies are an important part of managing employees. Similarly, contracts are an important part of running the commercial side of the business.  But it’s impossible to legislate every potential down-the-road situation ahead of time. That’s why one of the 13 core values at Return Path is We believe in doing the right thing I’ll admit that more than most of our values, this one sounds like Motherhood and Apple pie. Who doesn’t want to do the right thing?  The reason this value is an important part of our culture is that when we are in a tough situation, we stop and ask ourselves the most basic, yet thought provoking question — what’s the right thing to do here?…

Productive Eavesdropping

Productive Eavesdropping We’re in the midst of some pretty extensive renovations of our offices in New York at the moment.  For better or for worse, we’re doing this work without moving out.  We’ve basically crammed everyone into the back half of the office right now while the contractors are working on the front half.  When that’s done, we’ll all move into the newly-refinished front so they can do the same in the back. One of the interesting side effects of this project is that I’m sharing my office with Anita Absey, our head of sales.  It’s the first time I’ve shared an office in quite a while, at least since the first year of the company’s life when we all…

Building the Company vs. Building the Business

Building the Company vs. Building the Business I was being interviewed recently for a book someone is writing on entrepreneurship, which focused on identifying the elements of my “playbook” for entrepreneurial success at Return Path.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had a full playbook, though I’ve certainly documented pieces of it in this blog over the years.  One of the conversations we had in the interview was around the topic of building the company vs. building the business. The classic entrepreneur builds the business — quite frankly, he or she probably just builds the product for a long time first, then the business.  In the course of the interview, I realized that I’ve spent at least as much energy over…

Challenging Authority

Challenging Authority My dad told me a joke once about a kid who as a teenager thought his father was the dumbest person he’d ever met. But then, as the punchline goes, “By the time I’d graduated college, it was amazing how much the old man had learned.” The older we get as humans, the more we realize how little we know — and how fallible we are. One of our 13 core values at Return Path gets right to the heart of this one: We challenge complacency, mediocrity, and decisions that don’t make sense I will note up front that this particular value statement is probably not as widely practiced as most of the others I’m writing about in…

Who Are Your CPO and COO?

Who Are Your CPO and COO? Every senior management team needs a CPO and a COO.  No, I’m not talking about Privacy and Operations.  I’m talking about Paranoia and Optimism.  On my leadership team at Return Path, many of us are Paranoid and many of us are Optimistic, and many of us can play both roles.  But I’m fortunate to have two business partners who are the Chiefs – George Bilbrey is our Chief Paranoia Officer, and Anita Absey is our Chief Optimism Officer.  Those monikers fit their respective roles (product and sales) as well as their personalities. My view is simple – both traits are critical to have around the management table, and they’re best when they’re in some…

Why We Occasionally Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Why We Occasionally Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day No kidding – next Monday is September 19, and that is, among other things, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We’ve done a variety of things to celebrate it over the years, not the least of which was a series of appropriately-themed singing telegrams we sent to interrupt all-hands meetings.  I can’t remember why we ever started this particular thing, but it’s one of many for us.  Why do we care?  Because We are serious and passionate about our job and positive and light-hearted about our day This is another one of Return Path’s philosophies I’m documenting in my series on our 13 core values. I’m not sure I’d describe our…

Book Short: Wellness Redefined

Book Short: Wellness Redefined Well Being: The 5 Essential Elements, by Tom Rath and Jim Harter from the Gallup organization, is a solid read and incredibly short. It’s one of those books that’s really a long article stretched and bound. But it goes beyond the basics of what I expected, which was something like “having healthy employees cuts down on absenteeism” and has a couple great elements of food for thought for leaders looking to build cutting edge and uber-productive organizations. It comes out of the same general body of research as four other very strong books I’ve written about over time — First, Break all the Rules, Now, Discover Your Strengths, 12: The Great Elements of Managing (book, review),…

Why I Love My Board, Part III

Why I Love My Board, Part III My prophesy is starting to come true.  In Part I of this series four years ago, I asserted that Fred may be the only one of my directors who has done something this dorky, this publicly, but quite frankly, I could see any of us in the same position. Now, Brad Feld is no shrinking violet.  As far as I’m concerned, he made his film debut in the memorable “Munch on Your Bones” video (short, worth a watch if you’re a Feld groupie) something like 6 or 7 years ago for an all-hands meeting I ran.  But his newest short feature film, “I’m a VC,” made with his three partners, Jason, Ryan, and…

A Community of Employees

A Community of Employees One of the most memorable moments in a valedictorian speech that I’ve heard or read was at my sister-in-law’s graduation from Northwestern about 10 years ago. The speaker’s closing line was something like “Most of all, when you go out into the world, remember to be kind to other people.  It’s one of the best things you can do for the world.” It’s not as if people are generally trained or predisposed to be UNkind to each other. But respecting other people and being kind to them is sometimes elusive in our busy lives. I think one of the things that makes Return Path more of a community and less of just a “place of work”…