A suggested checklist for your end of year planning efforts. End of year planning checklist to prepare for 2024 This is the season to think about next year! It’s time to assess what has worked well in the past year that you want to build on, where to cut your losses, and what new things …
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Every year we design experiments – new things we try. Our 2023 experiment was doing short 2 minute videos – chalk talks. Below is a roundup of some of our favorites.
Some examples of recurring problems in startups with self-debugging questions to help point you to root cause corrective actions.
Holly Hester-Reilly offers a briefing on how to apply continuous product discovery and lean product principles in a B2B environment.
A great short briefing by Mark Brinkerhoff, President of Fusion Design on how starting with a sketch saves money; he uses a simple HVAC design example but the technique is broadly applicable.
Howard Dernehl documents common perceptual biases and offers suggestions for how to cultivate awareness and perceiving without bias.
This post explores three insights from Dr. Edward Baker’s “Scoring a Whole in One.” First, individuals must understand the enterprise context they operate in; second, leaders must serve and connect; and third, practice is necessary for improvement but does not lead to perfection.
This newsletter is devoted to practical advice for entrepreneurs on how to build, borrow, and keep trust.
Entrepreneurs starting their first business often hunt for a cookbook of recipes to make sense of a journey that is alternating between bewilderment and frustration. But startups fight for existence in a competitive and evolving environment, where changes in the technical or social substrates can invalidate their strategy or enable competitors without warning.
Tips to cut the stress of a startup: plan for learning, take time to recharge, join a peer support group, don’t compare yourself to others.
Business leaders today are faced with business challenges and a level of uncertainty that is unprecedented in recent memory. Established approaches and well-tried options no longer work, forcing us to make business decisions in uncertain times. This article collects some useful tips for making better business decisions that I have learned over the last 40 …
In “The Dance of the Possible,” Scott Berkun outlines four tests for understanding the real work involved to translate observations and creative insight into a solution.
Paul Tyma defines the Old Man’s Business Model as taking the sure way, even though it may be longer than shortcuts that may not work. Tyma calls a “trade-off of investment up-front versus brute-force hope.” The “old man” makes an investment up front instead of hoping a quick and dirty approach may work.
One documentary worth watching to get some context on the history of entrepreneurship and venture capital is “Something Ventured.” It’s a series of interviews with venture capitalists talking about their investments and their risk mitigation strategies in the 1950’s through 1970’s. It’s clear that they paid a lot of attention to “minimum viable products” and …
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Constructive Pessimism: to anticipate problems you have to be willing to acknowledge their possibility and look for them. Many entrepreneurs who are naturally optimistic make a serious mistake in discouraging pessimistic thinking instead of putting it to good use. The clever utilization of constructive pessimism is one of the keys to success.
Some models I like for change management in organizations. Startup entrepreneurs frequently have to navigate the challenges managing change as a part of the sales process. Intrapreneurs should find this list useful as well. I welcome any suggestions for additions, refinements, or improvements.
The targets that founders set for a startup, and the metrics they choose to measure their progress toward these targets, are key decisions in the definition of the business. The wrong targets–in particular selecting only targets that are easily achievable–will not only postpone difficult choices that will bring clarity but may doom a team from …
Some excerpts from insightful remarks by Dr. Jessica Richman in “Citizen Science and Mapping the Microbiome” that I use as points of departure for additional commentary on open source models for collaboration.
An interview with Jerry Weinberg where we explore the applicability of his Fieldstone Method for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, the implications of Stewart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn” for Weinberg’s dry stone fence metaphor for creation, and managing a crisis as marker for an end of an illusion.
Timothy Gallwey’s “Inner Game of Tennis” came out in 1974 and sparked a revolution in coaching and how athletes should approach improving their performance. There are several lessons that entrepreneurs can use in improving their personal performance and coaching others.
