The Difficulty of Pursuing Your Ideas
I recently came across this story on TechCrunch about Fitbit’s new $12m business Fitness Tracker Fitbit Raises $12M To Market New Wi-Fi Enabled Smart Scale, Aria. Like all ideas, someone else thought of this one well before Fitbit thought it up. In fact when I thought it up eight years ago, I probably wasn’t the first to think it up either. But being a relatively good idea that I thought I had at the time, seeing this funding got me thinking. Why didn’t I pursue that idea further seven years ago? Whether you are an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or even a wantrapreneur. When you have ideas that you think are good, what holds you back from pursuing them? Is it fear, is it being lost at where to start, or is it … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing, Startups, Technology
What You Say Matters
Following up on my post about the modes of communication I found this video by Simon Sinek on leadership, inspiration, and doing something meaningful important – Sinek explains how these are all tied together and need to be used at the same time. I believe that the message you are providing matters just as much as the mode you are communicating that message in and Sinek provides some great insights into making that message more important. Definitely some good lessons here for people and companies to think through when they communicate with people. … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship
Does The Mode of Communication Matter?
Communication is at the heart of all things in life… finding the love of your life, raising a round of financing, getting a promotion, or enjoying life with friends and family. Some of those communications are obviously more critical than others and some are more time sensative than others as well. Living in a world where corporate training dollars fuels the research and instruction that permeates our training attention we are all well aware of the communication styles that research such as Myers-Briggs brings us. This is good and we all make efforts to adjust what we are saying depending on the type of person we are talking to (more data/less data, small talk/straight to the point, etc.). All of this focus on communication style seems to skip the relevance of … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Investing, RealEstate, Technology
Traveling and Parenting
I have been on the road a lot more lately and I found myself the other day suddenly zoomed all the way back home with the help of text messaging and instant messaging. I was pleasantly working on some emails and out of the blue I started to receive text messages from my kids. First one, then the other, then the IM from my wife popped up. Here I was trying to stay focused on the work I was doing and I was pulled hundreds of miles away into Seattle responding to the kids, discussing with my wife the right approach to take, checking on the status of their grades online. Then diving into my lecture on responsibility in a few 140 character responses… it was only a matter of 10-15min… … Read entire article »
Filed under: career
Are There Alternatives to Resumes?
If resumes didn’t exist anymore or if employers just stopped accepting them, how would you choose to convey your talents? I was recently reading this article on the Wall Street Journal about Union Square Ventures removal of resumes in their hiring process. Christina over at USV is sharing the progress they are making and discovering that people are behaving different then expected. Namely that despite a timeline for taking their online interview, candidates waited until the last minute to get in before the deadline… busy prepping or procrastinating? I think the latter. Interesting though, as I’m sure the fire and forget resume submission process that happens so frequently is a bit circumvented here as the candidate needs to think about the firm they are applying to, the skills they have, and the … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Innovation
Reducing Payroll Costs Closer to Home
I have been slowly following a series of cost reductions that seem to touch a lot of people I know (yes myself included). We have all heard the stories on the news about automotive workers, home builders, and financial industry types losing jobs and not having anywhere to go. These seem so distant though (despite my brother-in-law being laid off from GM and my sister-in-law, his wife, being laid off from Expedia). Yeah there are some home builders here putting people out of work, there was WaMu, there is Russell. We don’t have much in the way of auto workers around here though. We’ve got a fair amount of airplane and boat makers instead that seem to be less impacted. We clearly aren’t as bad off as other areas hit harder by the declines in … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Microsoft, Profit, Seattle
