Three Powerful Conversations Managers Must Have To Develop Their People
The fog of war envelops every battlefield.
70% of Time Could Be Used Better – How the Best CEOs Get the Most Out of Every Day
The average tech CEO works about 300 days a year, 14 hours a day. That’s 4,200 hours a year. The stats for most other tech leaders and startup employees aren’t too far off. It sounds like a lot of time, but for most, it’s not enough. Nearly 30% of that time gets sunk into email.
Lessons in Tenacity from the Co-Founder of Foursquare
In 2013, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley walked into a bakery and bought a cake. Almond, with meringue on top. It was sweet — but the milestone was sweeter.
My Management Lessons from Three Failed Startups, Google, Apple, Dropbox, and Twitter
Kim Scott had one thing to do that day. She was going to price her product. It was the year 2000, she was the founder and CEO of Juice Software, and she had blocked off her whole morning to make this decision.
This is The World’s Most Underrated Secret to Extraordinary Success
“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.” — Roy T. Bennett The human mind can achieve only what is expected of it.
Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss
Kim Scott, co-founder of Candor, Inc., has built her career around a simple goal: Creating bullshit-free zones where people love their work and working together. She first tried it at her own software startup.
Tech and the Fake Market tactic
In one generation, the Internet went from opening up new free markets to creating a series of Fake Markets that exploit society, without most media or politicians even noticing.
1. The open internet markets
American culture loves to use the ideal of competitive free markets as the solution to all kinds of social problems. Though the vaunted Free Market has no incentives to, say, take care of babies with cancer, a well-functioning market can definitely be a great way to see which provider offers the cheapest price for a roll of toilet paper or a bushel of apples.
Given that cultural predilection, some of the first things people made in the early days of the web were new markets. Perhaps the canonical example was eBay; anybody (well, almost anybody) could list their ceramic figurines for sale on eBay and participate in a relatively fair market. On one side, a gaggle of figurine aficionados, enthusiastically searching for the best deals. On the other, a bunch of figurine vendors, competing on price, quality and service. In the middle, a neutral market that just helps connect buyers and sellers through instantly updated information. Everybody’s happy!
Later, a seller could buy preferred positioning for their products in eBay’s search results, and some product categories started to be dominated by wholesale suppliers, but it still remained a relatively open system. Everybody’s mostly happy!
Not long after eBay started, Google launched, as a sort of market of content, with its PageRank system choosing which pages show up in our search results, ranked by the number of inbound links. On one side were readers, and on the other side we had publishers, and in between was Google using a mysterious but still kind of comprehensible algorithm to create a market where almost everybody felt like they could participate.
But before long, those rankings started to be tainted by spammers… Read the full version from the author’s website.
How To Run Your Meetings Like Apple and Google
Contrary to popular belief: meetings are not the devil. We look at how to get more creative – and productive – with your weekly gatherings.
But there’s good news: Rapid experimentation with meetings in the past decade by startups and Fortune 500 companies alike has produced a new set of rules to consider. Here are three that seem to be universal: Of course, there’s no need to stop there.
- All meetings must have a stated purpose or agenda. Without an agenda, meetings can easily turn into aimless social gatherings rather than productive working sessions.
- Attendees should walk away with concrete next steps or Action Items. We love Action Items here, but we’re not the only ones. From Apple to the Toastmasters, the world’s most successful organizations demand that attendees leave meetings with actionable tasks.
- The meeting should have an end time. Constraints breed creativity. By not placing an end time, we encourage rambling, off-topic and useless conversation.
Of course, there’s no need to stop there. Truly productive companies always continue tweaking to suit their specific culture. Here are a few highlights:
Apple
During the Steve Jobs era, Apple constantly worked to stay true to its startup roots while becoming the largest company in the world.
- Every project component or task has a “DRI.” According to Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky, Apple breeds accountability at meetings by having a Directly Responsible Individual whose name appears next to all of the agenda items they are responsible for. With every task tagged, there’s rarely any confusion about who should be getting what done.
- Be prepared to challenge and be challenged. There are dozens of tales about Jobs’ ability to aggresively question his employees, sometimes moving them to tears. While you probably don’t need the waterworks at your office, everyone should be willing to defend their ideas and work from honest criticism. If a person has no ideas to defend, they shouldn’t be at the meeting.
Top 10 Ways to Brainstorm New Ideas
Ideas make the world go round, but coming up with great ones isn’t always easy. Here are ten ways you can prompt your brain to get those ideas flowing. “The best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored” – prolific author Neil Gaiman says.
Illustration by Fruzsina Kuhári. Photos by Craig Morey, thierry ehrmann, Juhan Sonin, Tina Mailhot-Roberge, iamtheo, Blan-K (Shutterstock), Malinka1 (Shutterstock), and Miguel Angel Salinas Salinas (Shutterstock), Mike Baird, tvnewsbadge.
10. Get Really Bored
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“The best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored” — prolific author Neil Gaiman says. Your brain wants to fill the void or at least entertain yourself with new ideas.
9. Isolate Yourself
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In a similar vein, Isaac Asimov suggests that you should spend more time alone with your thoughts, because the presence of others can inhibit your creativity. Spend time with just your thoughts — distracted by neither other people or technology — and your ideas will be unfettered. That’s not to say that group brainstorming sessions don’t have their merits — they just have to be done right — and allow for individual brainstorming time as well.
8. Combine Two Ideas to Make One Good Idea
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Creativity is all about making connections. If you have a hard time coming up with one fantastic idea, try combining two so-so or ok ideas. It’s like “idea sex“: Ideas breed ideas.
7. Drink Beer
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Coffee keeps you alert, but according to science it’s not the best drink for boosting creativity. Beer (or other alcoholic drinks) make you less focused on the things around you, which — like point number nine above, isolating yourself — can lead to big ideas. Everything in moderation, of course.
6. Make a Mind Map
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Mind maps prompt you to make connections between different concepts, encouraging the creation of new ideas. By diagramming your thoughts, you’ll be able to go both deeper and broader with your subject and uncover ideas that you might have missed with regular text notes.
5. Sleep on It or Try to Fall Asleep
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Ever try to fall asleep and suddenly your brain goes into overdrive thinking of new ideas? It’s a common phenomenon where your subconscious mind starts to take over because you’re finally relaxed and not distracted by anything else. Before bed is a good time to do a brain dump.
You might also be able to generate more ideas if you interrupt your sleep cycle: Wake up 60 minutes into a 90-minute cycle when your brain will be groggier and less likely to censor ideas you have percolating.
4. Take a Shower
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Great ideas happen in the weirdest places — like the shower. That environment puts us in a semi-meditative state where our minds are free to wander. There’s no guarantee you’ll get new ideas from your shower, but if you’re feeling stuck, might as well go get clean and see what happens.
If you can’t take a shower, similar activities that release a lot of dopamine in your brain, such as listening to music, can also boost your idea generation.
3. Take a Walk
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“Walking organizes the world around us.” Researchers have found that when people take a walk, they’re able to generate about 60 per cent more creative ideas (in the studies, participants came up more uses for an object) — and that effect lasted even after the participants sat down after walking. So go for a walk and break out of your current cycle to get some inspiration.
2. Stop Censoring Yourself
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We are our worst idea censors. We might have too many ideas that we never pursue (and then feel guilty about) or we too quickly label some ideas as stupid. Think twice before rejecting a creative idea that you might be uncomfortable with, and perhaps try keeping a “new ideas document” that encourages you to write down every idea — without guilt or criticism.
1. Capture Your Ideas, Anywhere and Everywhere
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That leads us to the most important thing: Ideas are no good if you have them but then forget about them. Always have a place to capture a new idea, whether it’s an app on your phone, a simple pocket notebook, a journal by your bedside table, or the waterproof AquaNotes for the shower. And then re-read your old notes to spark new ideas.
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