Category: Tools and Information
Do You Feel Pressure Or Do You Apply Pressure? | TechCrunch
One obvious yet under-appreciated law of business physics is:
For any given company, the larger the company becomes, the more opportunities emerge to screw it up.
Another obvious but not well-understood law:
The more screwed up your company, the more people will complain about it and blame you.
If we take these two together, it is easy to see that without intervention, the larger your company becomes, the more people will complain and blame you.
This seems simple enough, but CEOs often fail to understand the logic, become overwhelmed by the criticism, lose confidence in themselves, and decide that they are no longer capable of running their own companies. This can be tragic as I explained in “Why We Prefer Founding CEOs.”
3 Ways to Avoid Being Behind the Eight Ball | Peter Mehit
At one point in my career, I managed a lot of software projects. At least once on each project, I would be handed the classic dilemma: “You can have it on budget or on time, but you can’t have both.” The person that was saying this to me was expressing frustration about being behind an eight ball, sometimes because of my planning, sometimes theirs and sometimes it was the accumulation of all the times we didn’t say ‘no’ to the client.
During this period, I learned about a concept called the ‘triple constraint’. The ‘triple constraint’ consists of Scope, Time and Resources. Explained below, it is a quick way to think about any situation and be able to know how difficult it will be. One way to think about it is as three forces that are all pushing against each other such that, any change in one will affect at least one of the other two.
Continue reading “3 Ways to Avoid Being Behind the Eight Ball | Peter Mehit”
Artificial Windows | CoolBusinessIdeas.com
For residents living in the north, where sunlight can be a rare commodity during the winter, a psychological condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder is a very real problem. Light therapy is one way to shake off the winter blues, and although artificial lighting solutions do exist, they are generally available as simple variations on traditional desk lamps. An Italian designer has developed CoeLux, a unique system that delivers artificial light through an intelligent false skylight. The CoeLux skylight system utilizes three key elements to emulate natural lighting. Using proprietary technology, Di Trapani has incorporated select LED lighting to closely resemble natural light and the sun in the sky.
Lateral thinking | Creatingminds.org
A major force in British creative thinking is Edward de Bono. Although Maltese in origin, de Bono has doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge and is most famous for his addition of the term ‘lateral thinking’ to the English language in his 1967 book, ‘The Use of Lateral Thinking’. Since then, he has written around 40 books on creativity and thinking. This article is a whistle-stop tour of some of his more notable methods.
Lateral thinking
A way of understanding lateral thinking is through its opposite, vertical thinking. A vertical thinker is analytical, careful and precise, taking the data around a problem and analysing it with defined methodologies to find logical solutions. A lateral thinker understands vertical thinking, but chooses to deliberately outside of this bounded thought process. One reason that you have to dig in many other places is that creativity is like a joke: you do not get it until the punch-line at the end. It is not an easy concept to teach and a good way to learn is through examples. Here is one that de Bono used in his original book:
Closing the Deal Is as Easy as Smiling | Entrepreneur.com
Many entrepreneurs are unaware of the sales power and influence that arise from conveying a genuine smile. Poet Emily Dickinson nailed it more than a century ago when she wrote, “They might not need me, yet they might. I’ll let my heart be just in sight. A smile so small as mine might be, precisely their necessity.”
Though she was a poet and not an entrepreneur, Dickinson understood the power of the smile. She may have not understood the science that makes smiling such a valuable business asset, but she no doubt observed good things when she expressed a genuine smile.
4 Questions You Must Answer About Ditching Your 9 to 5 | Inc.com
I left the “security” of the 9-5 job world back in 2007. At that time, I was three years out of college and had a good job by other people’s standards, but found myself very unhappy. The people I worked with were fine. The work I was doing was fine. Everything was pretty much fine.
But I didn’t want fine.
In 2007, I took the leap from a normal job to co-found my first company. How I eventually talked myself into leaping came after answering a few questions:
If I stayed at the 9-5 job, what was the best case scenario?
I’d climb the fickle corporate ladder. I’d see incremental financial increases. Different words would be embossed on my business cards which only meant more responsibility and stress. I’d probably never be truly happy.
If I stayed at the 9-5 job, what was the worst case scenario?
I’d either work there for the next 30 years and be miserable or at some point I’d be let go, I’d have no income, I’d be scared, and I’d find some other mediocre 9-5 job. I’d definitely be unhappy.
4 Things Remarkable Startups Have In Common | Entrepreneur.com
Why do some start-ups succeed and others don’t? Here’s a hint: It doesn’t have to do with if an idea is good or bad. Indeed, the successful entrepreneurs are able to run with amazing concepts and pivot other when needing. There are a few more tried and true principles that can contribute to the success of your new company. Among other things, these are four things remarkable start-ups have in common.
1. Founders are insanely passionate about the idea. Don’t start a business without passion. You won’t be able to see it through if you are not really into your idea. Founders of most successful start-ups started searching for solutions to a problem they cared about and made it their focus.
“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out,” Steve Jobs has said.
Founders with great passion tend to inspire others to greater success, and they look out for those traits in new hires. According to best-selling authors and workplace strategists Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, passion enables innovation and creativity and makes employees want to stay in their jobs and contribute, even when they’re not feeling their best.
3 Overhyped Marketing Trends | Fast Company
It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in the hype of the latest trends in technology, mobile apps, social media, and the like. Many breakthroughs in these areas are indeed valuable for small businesses, particularly those that do all or most of their business online. However, much of what you hear on these fronts is hyped way out of proportion.
Sometimes, the person promoting the new trend has a vested interest. Just as often, people get enthusiastic about the latest bright and shiny thing. To help put this into perspective, here are a few overrated leading tech trends:
7 Risk Insights You Don’t Know And That Could Save Your Business | Bloomberg
Risks work together to threaten businesses in mysterious ways, and respect neither national boundaries nor past performance. To survive and thrive in such a world, organizations need to pay the subject its due. Three thought leaders from Zurich Insurance Group recently shared their ideas on seven critical keys to embracing the holistic risk management approach necessary to survive in the global spider web.
Analyzing risks individually can lead to seriously misleading conclusions.
“Take one thing at a time” might be good advice for children, but not for anyone trying to manage global risk. Our increasingly interconnected and complex world has made the domino effect commonplace—and increasingly global.
Examples of knock-on effects abound. A risk manager looking at Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza sees only the building’s inconsequential value … until it tragically collapses, with massive loss of life, as well as reputational damage to some of the world’s leading brands. Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami leads to a change in German nuclear policy—half a world away … and more fossil fuel usage, with a corresponding impact on climate change. A large Swiss bank sets limits for credit default swaps for its various business units … but doesn’t consider the aggregation of those limits.
Dispatches From The Front 