An excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard writing on helping others to understand. The key is to start from a deep understanding of the other person’s world view. This echoes Steven Covey’s fifth habit: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Kierkegaard on the Art of Helping Others to Understand Read More »
Is my topic this Thursday, February 15, at 7:00 PM, at the IEEE-CNSV meeting at KeyPoint Credit Union, 2805 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, CA. The event is free. I will cover a number of practical suggestions for using blogs to promote a consulting practice and wikis to foster project team collaboration against a deadline. Blogs and
Ten Tips for Leveraging Blogs and Wikis in Your Consulting Practice Read More »
Another excerpt from William Feather’s “The Business of Life” From page 262, an entry entitled “A Conservative Club.” More than forty-five years ago a group of men…organized a club for men of common intellectual interest. It was agreed that the membership would be limited to thirty, and that twelve meetings would be held each year
Recipes For Longevity in “Mutual Improvement Clubs” Read More »
Greg Knauss was a guest blogger on kottke last year and ended his two week stint with this observation on referential and experiential blogging: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. […] The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at
Greg Knauss on Bloggers: Experiential vs. Referential Read More »
In “Perseverance Rewarded” William Feather offers some good advice for getting started. Many folks succeed because they don’t realize how hard it is to accomplish what they have set out to do (of course several orders of magnitude more fail).
William Feather on “Perseverance Rewarded” Read More »
Six quotes from William Feather’s “The Business of Life” offer practical business wisdom from a successful publisher.
More from William Feather’s “The Business of Life” Read More »
I had lamented that I always Google too late, but lately I’ve been getting better. Here are some tools to use beyond Google and LinkedIn for searching for different kinds of specialized information. A9 let’s you search the contents of any books that Amazon carries, all of Amazon, and another 500+ specialized information sources. Citeseer,
Beyond Google: A9, Citeseer, and Krugle Read More »
Some quotes from William Feather’s 1949 book, “The Business of Life.” It’s a collection of short notes, letters, newspaper columns magazine articles. Very insightful, and something like reading a blog from the 1930’s and 40’s. The way to get things done is to have a good assistant. In closing a deal, what you don’t say
William Feather’s “The Business of Life” Read More »
Hugh MacLeod posted “Random Thoughts on Being an Entrepreneur” earlier this week. I’ve picked the best five and added some of my own comments 4. Once you become an entrepreneur, you find the company of non-entrepreneurs a lot harder to be around. You’ve seen things they haven’t; the wavelengths alter, it’s that simple. There are different perspectives
Hugh MacLeod’s Thoughts on Being an Entrepreneur Read More »
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on thinking about your business goals for 2007, it’s also worthwhile to look at your own motivations and needs. In an extending interview in Fast Company “Are You Deciding On Purpose,” Richard Leider advises that you ask yourself two key questions: What do you want? How will you know
Thinking About Your Business Goals for 2007, Part 2 Read More »
Thinking About Your Business Goals We went through a brief planning exercise with our clients, and some prospective clients, that several found useful. Since it’s not not too late to do some planning for 2007, here are a few questions that should answer on a single piece of paper (perhaps even a 3×5 card you can carry with you)
Thinking About Your Business Goals for 2007 Read More »
Eight quotes by Paul Saffo on how technology is re-shaping organization design and strategic thinking in both commercial and military realms.
Paul Saffo “Best Strategy is Ready, Fire, Steer” Read More »
This was a principle for systems design suggested in a talk I heard 15-20 years ago. I can no longer remember the speaker’s name but I remember that he was in the disk drive business. Google has proven unavailing in sourcing it so it was probably an original insight with this engineer that hasn’t gained wider
People Manage People, Tools Manage Data Read More »
Jon Winokur has published a number of good books, including “The Portable Curmudgeon” and “Advice to Writers,” and was interviewed September 2006 by Guy Kawasaki, which prompted me to add his most recent, “Encyclopedia Neurotica” to my Amazon cart (where books can linger for months or years). I was frankly a little disappointed, but found
Six From Encyclopedia Neurotica Read More »
I had the good fortune to attend the SVASE CXO Forum Dec-6-06 where Peter Bakonyvari, Vice President of Sales at JPMorgan SymPro, explored some of the practical realities in building a sales team. In particular what is involved in hiring and firing a sales person. First 90 days Is Critical Bakonyvari’s made the point that the first 90 days
Tips for Hiring (and Firing) a Sales Person Read More »
Michael Sippey’s original title for his August 2, 2006 talk at SVPMA was “Iterating Towards Bethlehem” was changed to a less cryptic Making the Shift From Being a Packaged Software Person to Being a Hosted Services Person. The original title was a riff on Yeats’ Slouching Towards Bethlehem (not the Joan Didion book or the
Iterating Towards Bethlehem: Michael Sippey at SVPMA 8/2/2006 Read More »
I was interviewed in June 2006 by Barbara Cass, Volunteer Director for the SDForum, the final text appeared in the July/August 2006 newsletter (see page 15 of the PDF version). I have updated it here to add links for many of the referenced works and the quotes. KV Rao and I did a one year
June 2006 SDForum Interview Read More »
Theresa heard a radio interview with Barry Moltz in 2003 and suggested that I get his book. In December 2003 I purchased a copy of You Need to Be a Little Crazy and when it arrived from Amazon I put it on my to-be-read pile where it languished until early this morning when I read
You Need to Be a Little Crazy Read More »
“Plus Minus People” make a strong initial impression but once you start working with them (or you hire them) you realize that they have a negative impact on the team.
I had lunch today at El Cerrito with an old friend from college who has done a number of successful startups. We talked of old classmates, children, the energy we had in our twenties, his new son, and my new granddaughter. And we talked about what it was like to do a startup. He left
Two Images of Startups Read More »
