It is really easy to fall into the trap of thinking someone else’s victory is your defeat. That their achievement makes you seem smaller. This thinking is so wrong as to be dangerous. Internal teams may compete and even keep score but the competition must be friendly. There are not winners and losers. My success…
If you aren’t paying attention to SpaceX, you should start.
SpaceX launched two rockets in 48 hours over the weekend. One of them was a second flight for the stage 1 section. If you read through the regular press, this comes across like just a regular activity. This is what disruption looks like in real-time when done perfectly. A private company disrupting a field that…
3 simple skills for working well with me: dream big, get stuff done, have fun.
Hat tip to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner for this one. His post (and associated Venn diagram) is spot on. If you are going to work, work on big ideas. Do things that matter. If you are going to work on big ideas and things that matter, make sure you get shit done. If we are going…
The Founding Entrepreneurs
I have been listening to the cast recording of Hamilton quite a bit over the last two months and decided to read a biography on George Washington to better fill in my understanding of the time period. I’m now up to George Washington in his first year of the presidency. It’s amazing how similar the…
Inefficiency can rise from overly flexible work hours.
One of the great things about agile working/work-from-home is the ability to set your own hours. When your performance is measured based on what you actually do, you are liberated from the need to simply tick a timecard. There is a downside to this flexibility. When your peak productive hours vary dramatically from those of…
The only person that can stop you from being successful is you.
There is only one person in this world that has the ability to stop you from being successful: you. It’s surprisingly easy to keep yourself from succeeding by doing any of these: Setting unrealistic goals for yourself. Underestimating your capabilities based on your current work instead of understanding your current capabilities. Not creating systems for…
The best CRE lease decisions are completely independent of lease costs.
A lot of times we can get caught up in financially engineering a lease to save an extra 5 or 10%. This is why we bring in quality brokers that know their markets, landlords, and customs. It is also just good business to negotiate the best lease costs possible and structure it around the best…
You aren’t successful until someone thinks what you do is a commodity.
A commodity is something considered easy to get and safe to procure. It’s something that people feel just happens without a lot of complicated efforts. Everyone wants to avoid being a commodity because it’s considered entering “the race to the bottom.” But anything too complicated is too difficult to sell. I strongly believe in working…
The emotional/rational journey caused by change.
Responses to change occur on a spectrum between emotional and rational. Based on how much experience they have with the particular type of change they are being faced with, they may respond out of fear or out of inquiry. During the course of any change event, people will change their response type as they learn…
What is America to me?
I apologize but I’m going off-script today. With the actions since the start of the year, numerous conversations and debates with friends, and much self-reflection I started writing about some thoughts that I’ve had. Surprisingly, I find myself consistently coming away feeling positive about the future even while feeling negative about today. Ignore or read…