Our well-intentioned but misguided desires to root for the independents. A couple of times a week I’ll walk with my wife to her subway stop before I head a few blocks uptown to my office on Union Square. On the way to the subway is a Bluestone Lane coffee shop….
Browsing Category Business
Empty Tank
On June 1st 2015 I broke out alone again. This month marks the end of the fourth year as an independent. It also marks the very first time the tank has been empty. There’s not enough left in the tank and the pipes to give the engine what it needs…
Ghosted: from URL to IRL
This week the video conferencing company Zoom announced its IPO. In the Forbes profile of its founder Eric Yuan, this nugget jumped out at me: For his IPO road show, Yuan deigned to make the 50-mile trek from his San Jose headquarters to San Francisco for a single investor lunch—and…
The one presentation slide to keep you on the edge of your seat
This morning I popped over to the John L. Tishman Auditorium at The New School on New York’s 5th Avenue. It was another edition of the immensely popular Creative Mornings lecture series, and this month’s guest speaker was the founder of Charity:Water, Scott Harrison. First was a slice of delicious…
The Kitchen
There’s a new kitchen opening up in town. Some ingredients are grown in-house – simple but juicy tomatoes, colourful bell peppers and a handful of flavourful herbs. Other items like organic eggs, crunchy kale, and succulent shallots need bringing in from experts. The kitchen has built a small but trusted…
Battle Scars
Every battle is different, as is each person’s experience of it. Every battle leaves its scars. Sometimes the scars are visible, other times they’re not. The battle may be oppression, or harassment, or abuse. A battle of love, or loss. It may be about moving up or moving on. It…
How to build your network in a new city, country or culture
12 ways to get going when you find yourself in some place new Moving around the world to live and work is becoming easier than ever. There are numerous factors and trends enabling and fuelling this shift: low-cost airlines, remote work, broader education access, open borders (sometimes…), an increase in…
Introducing Coffee Notes: A template for better meetings
A big part of my discovery mission living in a new city was meeting people for coffee. A lot of people, and a lot of coffee. I quickly realized two things: Several topics and questions came up repeatedly Preparing well led to better outcomes I started using a simple template…
Beyond the 1 hour meeting
The 1 hour slot has long been the default meeting duration – whether team gatherings, introductory coffees, or job interviews. While the times are indeed a changing, the 1 hour slot is largely still the default setting. Here’s another method to try when you’re meeting a fellow human being. 20,…
Workshop Slide Deck (guided): Lifecycles in products, companies, and careers
Introduction This is a workshop session I designed and facilitated in Summer 2018 (annotated and abbreviated version, with some classroom exercises and notes included for other educators to reference). Here’s the Slideshare version, although this annotated one is far better of course 😉 I created this as part of the growth…