Whoever came up with the name “Human Resources” deserves a medal. Such a descriptive, helpful, and seemingly useful name. Why yes, I’m human and I sure could use some resources. Purely viewed by the name, Humans Resources or HR seems like such a great idea. These are the people who are responsible for looking after… More
Management
Leadership Comes From Everywhere
For years I’ve been working on structuring an interview for assessing leadership. How do you figure out if someone has leadership skills in an hour-long interview? The answer is: you don’t. You need multiple humans not only asking a diverse set of questions but also listening to answers and pivoting to follow-up questions as they… More
Rainbows and Unicorns
Peggle is a casual game developed by Popcap. Originally released in 2007, the game is memorable because of it’s absolutely over the top level finishing sequence. In an explosion of rainbows, fireworks, unicorns, and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, you are generously emotionally rewarded when you finish a level. As a friend commented at the time,… More
One Thing
At this moment, at the beginning of the year, I have eight active big rock projects. The following attributes define these projects: I am the primary owner and have committed to someone that they will be done at a specific time. I am the correct owner of this project. There is no obvious better owner.… More
Five Leadership Hacks
MIT has a storied history regarding hacking where the act is viewed as a “clever, benign, and ethical prank or practical joke” at the University. Hack is also defined as the act of breaking into computers or computer networks. My definition is a combination of both. To me, a hack is a clever or unexpectedly… More
Gossip, Rumors, and Lies
Everyone is just… sitting there. Six of you. All managers who report up to Evan, your boss, who decided two weeks ago that “it’s probably a good idea for this leadership team to get together on a regular basis and talk about what is up.” He dropped an agenda-less, sixty-minute recurring meeting on everyone’s calendar… More
How to Recruit
From a recruiting perspective, the best engineering manager I’ve worked with established her reputation with two hires. It went like this: ME: “We need to build an iOS team, and while we have talented engineers, we don’t have time to train the current team on iOS, it’ll be faster to hire.” HER: “Great, who should… More
The Situation
Pressure’s on. I can tell from the silence in the meeting that something is up. There is no how’s-your-weekend chat-chit and everyone slowly looks at each other wondering about the source of the suspense. I write the agenda on the whiteboard knowing that we’re likely not doing anything on this agenda because…. … there’s a… More
Stimulus Driven Creatures
My favorite VC and I were talking about motivating humans over drinks at Mars Bar. She explained, “Rands, each person needs to hear the same message in a different way. Did you read the language of love piece that stormed around the Internet? It describes the five different ways we might like to receive love:… More
Shields Down
Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a good friend who asked, “I know you’re really happy with your current gig because you’ve been raving about it for a year, but would you like to… More