Let's Do Lunch.....Leadership and Career Growth in Silicon Valley

Burnout is rough. You know that feeling when you’re sitting on the couch in the evening and dread going to work in the morning. Or the Saturday that you tell yourself that the weekend is almost over and you’re that much closer to having to go to work. You’re burned out and [...]

There’s a good reason that the Scott Adams cartoon, Dilbert, has a character called “Mordac The Preventer of Information Systems”. I’ve heard many disparaging comments about I.T. departments in general and in the last 3 weeks I’ve been at my wits end trying to get a project approved in our I.T. department.

From Scott Adam’s [...]

We’ve all sat through long presentations that left us wondering how to get that fraction of our lives back. You know, those “FYI” presentations that are often more self aggrandizing than informative. During this economic downturn, I have seen an increased number of internal company business communications that have made me wonder who [...]

When I first heard about the modified Pecha Kucha exercise that I was invited to participated in (see Pecha Kucha on Summer Vacation) I wondered “what kind of nonsense is this?”. I first had to look on Wikipedia to figure out what it was. I’m not one for gimmicks, and this seemed [...]

I was invited to a pot luck dinner with other industry leaders and the host organized a very clever group activity that was a lot of fun. The invitation said that we would each be doing a modified and shortened Pecha Kucha that will consist of 2 to 4 slides with a couple of [...]

The economy seems to have stopped its free fall and is wallowing at a bottom. Individual savings has increased as a percentage of earnings and the housing market looks like its begun to stabilize. Unfortunately, credit has not been as readily available as the government policies have promised and businesses are not expanding [...]

The economic downturn drags on and the job market has gotten tough. There is a lot of speculation that the economy is at or near a bottom of this slump but how long will we stay there until recovery begins? Companies continue to let very talented people go as they hunker down against [...]

I’ve known many leaders that are extremely protective of their staff.  You know, those managers who people go to when they’re struggling with problems or have gotten themselves in trouble.  These “paternal” leaders often provide answers and approaches to problems that are clear an easy to follow.  The loyal follower just goes off and executes [...]

Product Management is often an under appreciated skill in large companies.  Organizational structures are built around product delivery and support.  Early in a company’s life the definition of products allow for economic survival.  As a company grows more cross-functional organizations try to have greater impact on product definition so that they can perform their functions [...]

This has been a tough year for everyone.  The real estate market collapsed, the consumer credit bubble popped, commercial credit is mostly unavailable, and most of us know someone who has been laid off.  My personal situation has been an attempt to really finalize an organizational turn around to align with the company’s direction and [...]