Sometimes I hold onto ideas as mine alone, almost as if I might have held onto my first baby blanket – tightly – for fear I might lose it. When I came to meetings early in my career, I came into meetings more wanting to show the idea, than share the idea. But at some [...]
Archive | Entrepreneurship
Don’t Give Up
Life is full of twists and turns and it is sometimes easy to get sick of the many gyrations that are needed to make a business thrive, a project launch, or even to get internal signoff in some bureaucratic version of the Hokey Pokey. It would be so easy to quit. But a part of [...]
Say Something Stupid
There are only two types of people in the world: Learning Beings, and Zealots. Learners are those that recognize that they will find out what they don’t know and they’ll keep modifying their ideas, perspectives, and approaches to adapt to the change around them. Zealots are the opposite. The word Zealot comes from the Greek [...]
Asking for Help
From the back seat, he coached me, “Mom, you should apologize to Dad”. I had just finished snapping an abrupt and snappish response to the driver of the car, who was also, um, my husband. I knew what I had done was wrong, but I was more focused on being mad, defensive, and frustrated. But [...]
Pursue Happiness
Today we celebrate the right to chase the dream. Or in the language of our forefathers, we celebrate the right to pursue of happiness. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and [...]
Picking the Big Idea
Most of us make things happen, get results, and deliver. But ask us if we’re focused on building our vision, on our big goals or if we even know what our big goal is, and what will likely follow is some combination of this: a big pause, or a look down at the carpeted floor, [...]
The Biggest Impact
It is tempting to load up our lives with commitments and projects. This allows us to express our many ambitious aims. It feels like we are being creative, and prolific, and alive. A few years ago, when I was leading a team, running a business, writing a book, keynoting at conferences, yada, yada, I embodied [...]
When Envy is Good
A friend asked me if I was mad at Seth Godin. And I was surprised. And then he reminded me that I had said something like “God damn that Seth Godin for another brilliant remark” on Twitter. I vaguely remembered typing it, so I paused. Was I mad, I wondered? I checked my soul. No, [...]
Cells Regenerate. Machines Compute. Humans Create.
Probably the only concept I still remember from when I programmed in Basic was this: Everything is a series of inputs, or outputs. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. Business can be seen as a series of inputs and outputs, too. [...]
Stopping Theft at Work
She had dark circles under her eyes as she walked into the conference room. Not just Friday-morning dark circles, but major-product-launch dark circles. I asked her how she was doing. She was ready to explode with fury. A key project was hitting a deadline, and a member of her team hadn’t been able to pull [...]