Leadership
Concentrate on Your Message. The Medium will Take Care of Itself.
As the author, BLAST publisher, cubist painter, modernist, futurist, critic and rabblerouser Wyndham Lewis knew, it’s all about the application of your creativity and putting in the work. Concentrate on your message, worry less about the tools, just be creative and do it. The medium will reveal itself. Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen, [...]
Hiring is for Lovers: Designing Organizations for Creativity and Impact
The importance of building an exceptional team is sometimes minimized by creative business owners. It is a “secondary task” unrelated, at least superficially, to the work we deliver to clients, often triggered under duress by an event: a huge new client project to ramp up for, a round of VC funding, the opening of a [...]
It’s the End of Planning as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
The death of strategic planning has been greatly exaggerated. But it’s true that we’re at a moment in time where top-down planning is less and less effective. Rather than set a plan and rigid parts to have others deliver on it, as a leader it’s more efficient to set strategic direction and then hand over [...]
Interview: charity: water’s Paull Young Talking Strategy and Teams
I met Paull Young when I had the opportunity to visit charity: water‘s offices for a studio talk during The 99% Conference. I was immediately taken with the power of the organization’s brand and depth of their commitment to solving the world’s water crisis, and also with Paull’s affable style and considerable expertise. I knew [...]
7 Valuable Non Sequiturs from SXSW Interactive
I attended SXSW Interactive for the first time in 2011. The last time I was in Austin was 15 years ago. It’s an understatement to say that the conference and city have changed. If I were to summarize the experience in ‘11 in one word it would be “tacos”. That or “overwhelming”. So many people. [...]
So What Do You Do Anyway?
I get teams of smart people to play well together. You know Duke Ellington? I’m like that, except instead of getting musicians to play well together, I get teams to play well together. Even when they’re all over the place. I work with teams who are all over the place–literally. Teams of people using digital [...]
Serial Polygamy: Shane Pearlman on Distributed Teams and the Freelance Workforce
A few days before the new year, I had the opportunity to chat with Shane Pearlman (@justlikeair), co-founder of the user interface design firm, Shane and Peter, evangelist for freelancers, expert on distributed teams and surfer. I wanted to speak to him because I admire his work and also because his demeanor is non-threatening, practical [...]
Virtually Attended: Thoughts on the Net:Work Conference
I could not make it out to SF for GigaOm’s Net:Work Conference. I did attend large portions of it virtually and wanted to comment on some of my own takeaways. In GigaOm’s words: Net:Work is “a new conference that highlights the opportunities that broadband and mobility have created for connecting work and workers and the [...]
Growing vs. Becoming Smaller
Growing has everything to do with: Making the choice to accept a different kind of responsibility Changing your job description Learning new ways of doing business Feeling like you’re riding blind (again) Increasing the potential for more income (reward) Decreasing the potential for more income (risk) Becoming smaller has everything to do with: Not letting [...]
Let others lead. They just might blow your mind.
Sometimes the most effective form of leadership is stepping aside to let others take over. There’s a growing trend in nimble, creative organizations that flattens the hierarchy completely, where work is completed on a project basis and led by whomever is most interested and skilled to suit a particular project regardless of age, experience or [...]
