I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet since April (I still hate non-competes and while I respect the right of the Chamber of Commerce to sue the FTC, I hope common sense prevails). Between then and now, we switched things up at Bolster, and my co-founder Cathy Hawley is now the CEO. Things are great there, and if you need any executive search help (Director to C-level or Board/Advisory/Fractional), let me know. I’ve been hard at work on a passion project while I’ve been between things professionally, and I’m excited this week to announce the launch of my new podcast mini-series, Country Over Self: Defining Moments in American History. That link is to the web site where you can see the whole plan…
Category
Current Affairs
Patience vs. Impatience
Patience and Impatience are both critical tools in the founder toolbelt. That sounds kind of funny since they’re at odds with each other. Let me explain. Patience is hard, but there are some things that require it. As they say metaphorically about Product, nine women can’t make a baby in a month. Products needs to be built, tested in the wild, marinate with clients. GTM motions take time to figure out. Brands take time to build unless you have billions to throw at the problem. Bread takes time to rise. Patience is a really useful tool when people on your team or board get itchy for success and you need to calm them down and keep them focused. Impatience, on the…
Should CEOs wade into Politics?
This question has been on my mind for years. In the wake of Georgia passing its new voting regulations, a many of America’s large company CEOs are taking some kind of vocal stance (Coca Cola) or even action (Major League Baseball) on the matter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CEOs to “stay the hell out of politics” and proceeded to walk that comment back a little bit the following day. The debate isn’t new, but it’s getting uglier, like so much of public discourse in America. Former American Express CEO Harvey Golub wrote an op-ed earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal entitled Politics is Risky Business for CEOs (behind a paywall), the subhead of which sums up…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part VII – Retrospective
(This is the seventh and final post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT. Other posts in order are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.) I’ll start the final post in this series by sharing the overview and retrospective deck that we created my last day and the two days after. Governor Polis is going to share this with the National Governors Association in case other states are interested in our model or learnings. This pdf, which you’re welcome to download or just view in SlideShare, is a good overview of what we did and where things stood as of Saturday, March 28, noting that by the…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part VI – How This Compared to Running a Company
(This is the sixth post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT. Other posts in order are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.) As these posts have been running, a few people have asked me to quickly compare this experience to the experience of being a Startup CEO. And that’s an interesting way to think about it. In a lot of ways, the couple of weeks of getting the IRT up and running felt like starting up a new business, only a lot more intense. Following the outline of sections in Startup CEO: a field guide to scaling up your business… Part One: Storytelling. The whole timeframe was…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part V – Wrapping Up, Days 10-12
(This is the fifth post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT. Other posts in order are 1, 2, 3, and 4.) Thursday, March 26, Day 10 Sarah continuing to take over and stronger by the day Sarah cleared me to go home, only one more person to ask Deep deep dive on Mass Testing – so good to spend that time Pretty much got the strategy right – shocking we could get that close with so little public health experience – Kyle awesome – EOC leadership briefing That was most of the day Some downloads to Sarah and Kacey Feeling that two of our project teams are…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part IV – Replacing Myself, Days 7-9
(This is the fourth post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT. Other posts in order are 1, 2, and 3.) Monday, March 23, Day 7 Wellness screening – put hot cup of coffee against my temples – now finally the thermometer works (although I can’t say that it gives me a high degree of comfort that I have figured out a workaround!) Furious execution and still backlog is growing no matter how much I do – thank goodness team is growing. Never seen this before – work coming in faster than I can process it, and I am a fast processer. Inbox clean when I go to…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part III – Hitting Our Stride, Days 4-6
(This is the third post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT. First two posts are here and here.) Friday, March 20, Day 4 Morning pilates going pretty well, a good daily routine here Wellness Screening on the way in for the first time. Uniformed National Guard guys taking temperature on surface of face/temples. Can’t get it to work – takes 6x Leadership and prioritization of important over urgent – staff the team Strategic National Stockpile failure – they send us 60,000 masks and Colorado is using 68,000/day. They send us ZERO ventilators. Seems like it’s neither strategic nor a stockpile. Guess it really is every state for…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part II – Getting Started, Days 1-3
(This is the second post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT. Introductory post is here.) Tuesday, March 17, Day 1 Extended stay hotel does not have a gym. Hopefully there is one at work Walking into office for the first time. We are in a government building in a random town just south of Denver that houses the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) and the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. These are the teams who are on point for emergency response in Colorado when there is any kind of fire, flood, cyberattack, or other emergency MAJOR Imposter Syndrome – I don’t know anything about anything…
State of Colorado COVID-19 Innovation Response Team, Part I – A Different Kind of Startup
(This is going to be an interesting week. I expect in a couple days, a group of friends and former Return Path colleagues and I are going to officially start a new company once initial funding closes. I will write about that down the road, but first, this message brought to you by COVID-19.) I just returned from spending an intense two weeks in Denver. On March 15, my long-time friend and Board member Brad Feld called me with an interesting idea. His friend, Colorado Governor Jared Polis (who I’d met a briefly couple times over the years), had an idea of starting and rapidly scaling up a task force in the state government and wanted to tap a private…
Grit
I was honored this week to be in a small group “fireside chat” with Angela Duckworth, author of the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, and to meet her and ask a question. I want to hit on one theme here from the book and dialog, but I’ll start by sharing a 2×2 matrix (remember, I’m an ex-consultant, I think in frameworks) that we’ve used at home with our kids periodically. For the most part, we use it to talk to them about why they should work harder on math homework, but it’s had other use cases as well. Hopefully it makes sense on the face of it… …but essentially the framework teaches that if you are talented…