Microsoft wants to compete badly with the iPad and Android tablets. So badly that they’ve decided their best bet is to create a Productivity Tablet. As such, their Surface tablet is more laptop than tablet because it uses a laptop OS and has laptop functionality. Tablets are not just form factors, it’s a different way…
The customer’s role in defining your solution.
Let’s start with a fact: the customer is not always right. In fact, often the customer doesn’t know what they want, they just know they have a problem they need to solve. For existing tools and services this isn’t so bad because at least the customer will be somewhat familiar with the available tools, products,…
Hiring for long-term growth.
From Harvard Business Review we get a great discussion on what so many companies do wrong when it comes to hiring for growth. It’s one of the best reads I’ve ever seen there and you should go now to read the whole thing. But for those that like just the summary, here’s the key passage…
5 Technologies no agent should live without
I saw a tweet with this message and couldn’t help but click. 99% of the time the suggestions are silly and ridiculous. As soon as I saw the link went to an about.com page I knew this was going to be one of those times. According to this article, every agent needs 1) Smartphone, 2)…
Always seek out A players. No exception.
Some people want to hire B players. They want someone who will sit in a cubicle, head down and do what they are told. No exception, no creativity, no fuss. Those people are wrong. Always seek to hire A players. Most A players know they are A players, most B players think they are A…
Simple, yet effective, innovation
With two polar vortices down and one more to go, anyone with children in school are looking at the calendar and cursing their snow days. Yet some schools are beginning to leverage snow days to their benefit by setting at home assignments that are to be completed during the snow days. This is an absolutely…
Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX and Ingenious Design
There is an art to creating a multi-billion dollar US manufacturing firm. Elon Musk has created one in Tesla already and it won’t be long before SpaceX is there as well (if they aren’t already). Money systems (Paypal), cars and rockets are where he spent his time. Huge, established industries. Yes somehow he is rewriting…
The Real Value of Experience
In most conversations Experience is an intangible, something that people acquire simply by doing “things” throughout their life. If you’ve been doing a job for 25 years, you have 25 years worth of experience in that job. Seems like a fairly inaccurate measure because if you spent the first 5 years getting the coffee surely…
#Workplace absenteeism is not always a problem.
Let’s walk through a scenario- You have a manager that sets the expectation with his team that work can only occur in the office. He doesn’t support working from home or the coffee shop or the cafeteria downstairs. This manager wants to see employees working and at work. He has an employee that needs to…
Knowledge of a topic is not the same as being able to deliver in that area.
I’ve heard this theme a lot lately: Jim sure knows a lot about beekeeping. When you hear him talk about it he’s clearly an expert. I definitely have to hire him to run the new apiary I want to start! There is a significant difference between being able to talk the talk and walk the…