Monthly Archives: February 2017
Do the best practices work for your organization?
“We constantly look to what others are doing. We attend conferences, read books, talk to friends and colleagues to get their input and advice, and sometimes we are also the dispensers of advice. We are in pursuit of understanding the best practices of others to help guide us. But it is a flawed assumption that […]
Sell what you believe
“The goal of business then should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people who believe what you believe, the left side of the bell curve. They perceive greater value in what you do and will happily pay a premium or suffer some sort of inconvenience […]
Read Multiple Books in Parallel
I know it’s weird, but it’s my favourite style since 2011 up to now… One of the ways reading goals can stall out is that you get bored of the book you’re reading. Pushing through each chapter becomes a slog, and then you give up on your reading goal completely. The solution to this problem […]
Algorithm of learning
“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” ― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book The famous Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman understood the difference between “knowing something” and “knowing the name of something” and it’s one of the most important reasons […]
So you want to be a manager?
There is another way of saying what you do as a manager is variable because every team needs something different. Sometimes, the current and most important thing the team needs is a vision. Or a series of technical decisions to achieve a robust architecture. Or a week-by-week roadmap. Or a clear design. Management is the […]
Management by Objectives: The Planning Process Applied to Daily Work
The system of management by objectives assumes that because our concerns here are short-range, we should know quite well what our environment demands from us. Thus, management by objectives—MBO—concentrates on the planning process and tries very hard to make them specific. The idea behind MBO is extremely simple: If you don’t know where you’re going, […]
Sometimes you have to go out and get drunk
“In China, sometimes you have to go out and get drunk with a person – get really, really drunk with a person for a deal.” The room erupts with laughter. Lucep co-founder Zal Dastur’s the one who’s sent the room into stitches. He’s joined by Shekar Sahu, co-founder of HealthcareMagic (he sold the company for […]
Passion
Passion comes from feeling like you are a part of something that you believe in, something bigger than yourself. If people do not trust that a company is organized to advance the WHY, then the passion is diluted. Without managed trust, people will show up to do their jobs and they will worry primarily about […]
Business is like dating
“After all, people are people. To learn how to apply WHY to a business situation, you needn’t look much farther than how we act on a date. Because, in reality, there is no difference between sales and dating. In both circumstances, you sit across a table from someone and hope to say enough of the […]
Pfeffer’s 6 factors that effective organizations have in common
“Management expert Jeffrey Pfeffer laid it all out in his book The Human Equation. Based on his analysis of many companies in many different lines of business, what makes for successful companies overlaps substantially with what makes for good work. In his words, a good company nurtures “high commitment” workers, and high commitment workers care […]
The Agile Note 
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