My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.– Mark Twain, “That Awful German Language” Twain was likely making a joke but, in my experience, he is directionally accurate. He provides several examples of…
People seem to be obsessed with executive tenure. Executive search firm Spencer Stuart reports the average tenure for a Chief Marketing Officer is now 45 months, based on analysis from the top 100 advertised brands. This is a significant improvement from five years ago, when studies showed that the average CMO tenure was anywhere from…
Let me say this simply. Complexity is the biggest villain in business. It is a kill or be killed proposition. Complexity is more Loki than Bane. It’s sneaky, shifty, and has different forms. It hides in the cracks of your business, growing more disruptive and indelible with every minute people fail to notice. Complexity kills…
Along with 70,000 fans, I recently watched my San Francisco 49’ers defeat a tough Chiefs team in Levi’s Stadium. Amid the din of the stadium, the cheers and boos, I foolishly tried having a conversation with a friend. Despite my best efforts to maintain a conversation, I was no match for Colin Kaepernick, stadium music,…
Those of us who are privileged to be leaders understand how difficult it is to lead people. Not assets, not resources. People. Early in my career, I spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be a leader. I talked to more seasoned leaders, I read books on management theory, and –…
Social selling is one of the hottest buzzwords in the technology market. Unfortunately, social selling is usually misunderstood as navigating the sales process using only tools like Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook. While technology can help, social selling is about building stronger relationships with potential buyers, based on an authentic sense of empathy and a deep…
It’s amazingly hard to ask good questions. I’ve been in investigative mode over the last month; trying to understand the root cause of a performance issue and also designing a potential new business model. Both projects mean I’ve had to ask a lot of questions. And they also mean I have had to remind myself…
Remember ‘keep it simple, stupid‘? Even though it’s been a popular mantra since 1960, simplicity is a hot topic these days. In my previous blog, Is Complex Better than Complicated?, I wrote about two Zen of Python’s 20 design principles: Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. Ultimately, simple is what we are all…
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. This is a fantastic quote from Douglas Adams, best known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the answer to life, the universe and everything. This specific quote appears in another book, The Salmon of Doubt,…
Unless you have a software background, you’ve probably never heard of longtime Python coder Tim Peters. In Zen of Python, he suggests 20 design principles including: How is “complex” better than “complicated”? After all, their dictionary definitions are similar and they are listed synonyms in the thesaurus: Since I love writing about words and word origins, I decided to dig…