“It’s a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur’s metric for success. It isn’t, nor should it be.”  Richard Branson Five 9s is so 1999. IT leaders need to think differently about the performance indicators for themselves and their organizations. 1.     The frequency of features and functions delivered to the customer. How often is your […]

“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” Henry David Thoreau The late Steve Jobs would gather with his top 100 people to prioritize. They would hammer out top 10 priorities, and he would cut down to three, and declare that no Apple money […]

This year’s theme: Balance for Better. My grandmother was a nurse and midwife in pre-World War II London. She delivered babies in conditions worse than what you see in “Call the Midwife.” She was a nurse in Europe leading up to the war. Smart and fierce and ahead of her time. She married late, for […]

True: “A measure of a man is what he does with power.” Plato  Sadly, not always true: “Pulling someone down will never help you reach the top.” – Unknown Most of us have experienced or have read about situations where an individual’s rise to the top is peppered with shoving others aside or down. OK, […]

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”  Benjamin Franklin, American inventor  I wasn’t a favorite of some teachers in grade school, because I got distracted easily (if there was someone passing notes in class, that was probably me) however I tested quite well. Though […]

“Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.” Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric  Let’s be real, for most of us it’s more comfortable to be in the audience than at the podium, clicking through PowerPoint slides and hoping you have cogent answers for the Q&A portion. For those of […]

Tetris is a video game where blocks of various shapes slide down the screen, and you have to shift them left and right as they fall, to fit together and make solid rows. The blocks kept coming faster and faster, so it became more difficult to create complete rows, leading to gaps all over the […]

I learned my lesson from a microphone. I needed one to support an internal meeting once, and some weeks later I was looking at Planned vs. Actual spend for the month and noticed a $5.00 charge. Because it was unusual to see tiny amounts like that, I asked what it was – and sure enough, […]

“Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Joe Biden Peering into a budget will provide insight into an organization’s value system. A good litmus test for the true importance of initiatives and operations, is to measure the relative dollars apportioned. There are programs and functions […]

“Leaders are more powerful mentors when they learn, than when they teach.” Rosabeth Moss Kantor Unusually, last week I spent more time in the company of business women than I did men. The two primary stakeholders of a client are women, I had a business dinner with a fellow executive colleague, and I spent a […]