It is so easy to keep push, push, pushing. Well, not easy, really. Maybe the better word is conditioned. Through each achievement (or like, or tweet), there’s a rush of dopamine in the human system, that signals, “things are good”. Which creates a biofeedback loop to keep doing more of the same. As in, as [...]
Tag Archives | Harvard Business Review
Lessons from when TED Lost Control of Its Crowd:
Today, Harvard Business Review’s (the premier management magazine in the world) magazine for April was released. (Check out the upper corner, because this is fun news to share!) One of the featured 3,000-word articles is on Leading in the Social Era. It’s entitled, When TED Lost Control of it’s Crowd. In this article, I discuss [...]
Are You Giving Up Power?
When I spoke at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit, the first question asked in the room was this: “Doesn’t this Mean I am Giving up Power?” And I loved it. This is what women do: we dive into the heart of an issue so we can deal with directly. Just as surely as social boosts [...]
Developing Ideas + Dealing with Haters
Whew! I feel like I just gave birth to an intellectual baby. And it was a big one. A 10-lber. And pushing it out was hard. And some people thought it was ugly. Regular readers to Yes & Know will have noticed I’ve been sucked into a particular idea for months now… Writing this 5-part [...]
Why Porter’s Model No Longer Works
This post went live mid-week last week, on HBR. It is the 3rd installment on a series of why fast / fluid / flexible is crucial for the social era. The headline has caused some interesting discussion / perspectives. (It also got some VERY strong personal attacks going.) I’m curious to see what you think, [...]
It’s the Leadership, Stupid
The morning coffee break had wrapped up and we were back at it, involved in a deep discussion. Some people were at the whiteboard, some debating one another, and some listening attentively as we batted an issue around the room. The door to the conference room swung open and it seemed that a new member [...]
People Are Not Cogs
Every day I go to meetings where language suggests people are cogs. With peers in a few CEO roundtables, I’ve heard things like: “I plan on hiring 3 biz dev people to get $345K per headcount in revenues.” After publishing a book about closing the execution gap by focusing on the “peopley” stuff, CEOs of [...]
Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time
Trust, fights, and child care. When I’m advising start-up teams nowadays, I ask a lot of questions around those three areas. Which makes it sounds more like a marriage counselor’s office, rather than a boardroom, right? Quite often, the teams I’m talking with think culture is some woo-woo stuff that doesn’t make any difference in [...]
Three Times You Have to Speak Up
It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent. I was thinking about that story by Thomas Merton during a recent board meeting. The CEO and CFO were marching through their 112-slide presentation. Recent market updates, a technical deconstruction of various [...]
What Surrounds Us, Affects Us.
We are all connected. We mostly know that. Do we also realize that who we hang with affects our moods, what we think about as valid, it shows up in our decisions, and it affects what we create? Maybe. This week, I worked with an editor to create my first post for the HBR (Harvard [...]