If you’d met me about a decade ago, you would’ve quickly found out that I was deeply devoted to a few things: meditation, a raw food diet, and reading various versions of the Tao Te Ching. I had been on a very intentional path of self improvement for a little over two years. Since then,…
Tag: startup
On Tremendous Effort
If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you might’ve come across a post I wrote shortly after two incongruent things happened in my life. I had a baby (my first) I started a new job at a 4 person startup as Head of Operations (not a small task) The post was titled New…
The Problem With Fake It Till You Make It
As someone who has his own business (you’re probably reading this on it right now), I’m very familiar with all the quotes about how to fake it till you make it. “You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until…
KPIs for People Teams
Understandably, teams and leaders are always curious about how to best monitor, track, and analyze data for various functions at the company. In this post, we’ll focus on: The most useful KPIs for People teams How to establish tracking and reporting metrics regarding these areas of responsibility Common metrics that are often misinterpreted or meaningless…
Retaining Your Best Employees
When we talk about retaining employees, what we’re really discussing are incentives that are effective and how to operationalize them. Regardless of the organization, having clear and influential mission and values is paramount. Ultimately, it comes down to understanding who has joined your company and why. As to not regurgitate much of what I’ve said in the articles…
Your Ideas Don’t Matter
Yes, that’s a bombastic title. However, the prevalence of potential entrepreneurs who fixate on ideas over execution is also extremely outsized. In this post, I’ll start to explain why that’s wrong-headed, and will write more on this subject in the future. I think this epidemic has been around for a while, and it’s likely that…
How to Scale Startup Operations
Let me start with a trite statement, so we can all agree with it and get it out of the way. Change is hard. There are, however, fundamental steps and considerations that you can take to smooth out these transitions. In this post, let’s focus on developing and implementing process into a startup that has…
Developing and Growing Corporate Culture
I see some version of the following questions crop up fairly frequently, especially in the startup community, so I figured I’d take a moment to share a few thoughts. The questions go something like this: How should we take steps to implement a healthy corporate culture that will strengthen as we grow? If we’ve taken…
On Building Credibility
Being credible at any stage, but especially as a startup Credibility manifests itself in different ways, whether in reference to a person or an entity, with values that are shared or unshared, and any sort of historical context or existing relationships between the parties. Webster’s defines credibility as–I’m kidding, I’m only kidding! Read on, discerning…
What is Operations at a Startup?
Or, what does a COO, VP, or Head of Operations do at a growing company? Given my idiosyncratic background, having touched a lot of different business functions (product, project management, marketing, people or the dreaded “human resources”, recruiting, talent management, sales, partnerships, client success) and operated as a director, manager, founder, president, and department head…