Carefully Consider Which Chasm You Choose to Cross

February 17, 2008

Originally published September 19, 2006.
I’ve been writing about The Chasm. The Chasm is the skills gap that must be crossed to move from one area of practice into another area of practice—specifically the move from specialist competencies (like teaching, engineering, programming, and law) into general business competencies.
I like the metaphor of The Chasm because [...]

The Chasm

February 17, 2008

Originally published September 18, 2006.
You, my friend, have a problem. You’re a specialist (engineer, developer, teacher, designer, etc.) with designs on the big chair. But your aspirations of upward growth and ever brighter prospects have uncovered a chasm in the road before you.
This chasm represents the gap in your repertoire of skills and experience [...]

The New Rules

February 17, 2008

Originally published September 8, 2006.
The old adage goes something like this, ‘Promote a good Engineer into management and get a poor Manager’. I’ve often wondered why this is the perception? (I’m absolutely convinced that the statement is partly a reflection of self-serving motivation held by the managers who utter it—but that’s another story.)
A [...]

Run Bandit, Run

February 14, 2008

There were four of us. We lived in the Bay Area and were doing a startup. We had a cube in an incubator in Palo Alto. One guy, the President, had the cube. The rest of us worked from home. We didn’t even have a garage.
The incubator held “launch parties” [...]

The Onion on Management: “Failure Now an Option”… So Go Back to Bed

February 11, 2008

Former motivational speaker Dr. E.L. Kersten (Ph.D. Organizational Psychology), decided one day that he had had enough. On the stump, going from company to company, he concluded that he no longer believed what he said about motivation, teamwork, desire, loyalty, sacrifice, leadership, etc. All of the head-line topics of Organizational Behavior were, he thought, crap. [...]

Not an MBA Syllabus / Part 1

January 31, 2008

What is a currency binary? I don’t know, but I’d feel really smart if I did? Finding out, surprisingly, is not very difficult. Yes, you can Google it, but you can also go to Investopedia and look up any possible word, term, or concept related to finance. Call it Finance 101.
What does [...]

Designers Love Constraints/A Recession is a Constraint/Designers Love Recessions

January 30, 2008

By now we all know more or less what has driven us into the current ‘recessionary environment.’ (Their words are so poetic). CDOs, SIVs, LBOs, Private Equity, all enabled by cheap-to-free capital that originated under the mattresses of America’s poorest and often first time home-buyers. Unforgivable, indeed, but at least now we know [...]

Not an MBA

January 28, 2008

What do Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, and Howard Schultz have in common? All of them are business leaders, many of them are well known innovators, and none of them have an MBA.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Bill Gates. He’s number one [...]

Why do you say “fuck” so often?

January 23, 2008

I was asked, “Why do you say ‘fuck’ so often?”
I have many reasons. Here are three.

Business is upside-down
Business leaders devalued the process of creation and innovation and the people who do it. “Work” is now a dirty word (apparently it rhymes with “labor”). Ever heard the term “individual contributor”? It’s the [...]

Boo Hoo… Don’t Be a Fuckin’ Wimp!

January 22, 2008

An open letter to the punks who run corporate America…

Starting Monday afternoon as the markets began to close in London, Munich, Shanghai, and Tokyo, trembles of a pending market slide became louder and louder here in the US. The FTSE Index on the London Stock Exchange reached a low point not seen since 9/11, and [...]