For this piece, I am going to simplify management a bit. Let us assume there are three different hats you wear as a manager. They are: the Leader, the Fixer, and the Coach. I will briefly explain each role and then explain how I’ve screwed up each. I’m going in reverse order because I’m building… more
At some point in your leadership career, you’ll need to care about performance management. My first bit of advice is the hardest: don’t ever let yourself think or say the words “performance management.” This is impossible, but aspirational. I will explain. My hard earned definition of performance management: a well-defined workflow that either leads to… more
Earlier this week a friend asked if I knew any 5-10 person start-ups that were doing interesting work in the productivity space. I knew a couple, but the always-full-of-opinion Twitter seemed like a good place to learn more, so I asked. The following is a selection of the surprisingly large number of start-ups that responded.… more
Over 400 folks have taken the time to fill out the Rands Leadership Survey. Thank you. Some very brief stats:
As I mentioned in the introduction to the survey, I’m leaving the survey up for a month and will then publish results. If you haven’t already and you are a leader of humans, take 10 minutes of your time and take the survey.
Zach looked tired, he looked weary. “I used to code. I’d get to work a little after 10am high on caffeine, I’d sit down at my desk, glance at my email, and then start coding. Sure, there would be a meeting here and there, but we’d be talking about code or things that lead to… more
Mtrek is a real-time multiplayer space combat game loosely set in the Star Trek Universe. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Check out a screenshot. OoooOooh yeaaaaaaaah. Designed and written by Tim Wisseman and Chuck L. Peterson in the late 80s at University of California, Santa Cruz, Mtrek is completely text-based. To understand where an enemy ship… more
Dear Summer Interns: Your stock is up — like way up. Ten years ago when I was hiring interns at the mothership, my incredibly flawed and shortsighted policy was to hire as many as they’d let me, dole ’em out to the teams that screamed the loudest, and see what happened. There were successes, we… more
The list of reasons folks want to become a manager is varied. I think it looks like this: I want to have more influence over product development. I wanted to try something new and I get along with people. I’m never going to be a great programmer, but I sure know what programmers are talking… more
