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

It’s the spring of 2009 and the economy is in the dumper. The average American family’s wealth has dropped by 18% and California’s unemployment rate has topped 10%. Just about everyone in Silicon Valley knows someone who has been laid off from, what were once, promising economic high flying companies and employees are [...]

I was in a series of leadership offsites this week and had some interesting observations about communication. All the leaders around me were the best that I have ever worked with. They understand business and how to lead. Each leader has their own style and strengths which create their own organizational culture. [...]

One of the biggest traps that we fall into in technical companies is we assume we know what customers want or need. Silicon Valley companies grew up building engineering products for engineers. This means that we started by making products for ourselves and assumed that customers needed the same stuff too. Fortunately, [...]

People hate to fight. Its human nature to avoid conflict and we all want to be liked. Unfortunately, people often mistake confrontation for aggression. The reality is that conflict can be positive and constructive. Confrontation does not have to, and shouldn’t, be personal nor does it have to be mean. [...]

I was chatting with a member of my management team in the hallway the other day and something she said really stuck in my head. We were talking about the organizational performance turn around that we were in the midst of and she said, “You’ve really added simplicity and definition to what we need [...]

Working for a large company makes it very easy to get comfortable. You wake up and go to the same office, work with the same people, and do relatively similar things consistently. It’s easy to get lulled into the pattern. In Silicon Valley, that pattern became a lifestyle. The internet bubble [...]