All posts tagged: Leadership

The three kinds of leverage that anchor effective strategies

June 20, 2023
by Michael
Asides / Strategy

Jason Cohen writing on A Smart Bear about one of the fundamental concepts of strategy, durable, differentiated strengths. “Leverage” means generating a large effect from a relatively small effort, created by riding tailwinds of natural abilities or hard-won assets, rather than fighting a battle for which you are ill-equipped. […] Leveraging strengths is the only way to do great work. (Not “fixing weaknesses.”) Better yet, leveraging differentiated strengths means you beat the competition. Best is […]

Embrace the red

January 25, 2023
by Michael
OKRs

One of the biggest success factors for OKRs is culture. A healthy team culture of trust is fertile ground for successful OKR implementations. One of the core principles is to “embrace the red” in OKR reviews. It’s important to celebrate what teams are doing well. At the same time, learning and growth happens in areas that are blocked or need attention. As teams create new categories, targeting new audiences and inventing new products, there will […]

Categories for journaling

September 24, 2022
by Michael
Asides

Over the past few years, long-hand journaling helped me reflect and think through many personal and professional topics. Ofir Sharony offers a nice framework to establish a journaling routine. “Start by shutting down all interruptions: disable Slack mentions and email notifications, place your phone out of sight, and enter your flow by wearing your noise-canceling headset. Once you feel focused, go over today’s calendar, skim through your to-do list, and reflect [on one or more […]

Companies are not families

February 19, 2022
by Michael
Leadership / Opinion

Good New York Times interview with the new Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy. Near the end he dropped a nice nugget: And I say you’ll never hear me say we’re a family. We’re a sports team, and we’re trying to win the Super Bowl. And so we’re going to put the best players on the field we can. And if you go down the field, and we throw you the ball, and you drop it a […]

About this blog

November 2, 2015
by Michael
Meta

Having started multiple blogs before with various degrees of moderate success, I know of the dangers of crafting the About-page too early: you write down all your good intentions and once you press “publish”, you struggle to live up to your grand aspiration. It would be much safer to do it with a portfolio of posts in your back pocket. However, I understand that it is a good idea to define the scope of the blog early on […]

Advice to new graduates

October 15, 2015
by Michael
Leadership

Amongst other things, I’m a manager of new starters in my job. A few weeks ago I was asked to speak to the upcoming class of new starters in our organisation and share some of my learnings with them. Below is a write up of the talk, which I thought might be helpful. It isn’t meant to be advice, but rather it’s an opportunity to share a few things, that I remind myself of from […]