Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship & Leadership’ Category
Are You “Ment” To Be A Great Leader?
Friday, February 28th, 2014What makes a great leader? Is it solid management acumen? Is it an aggressive drive? Is it the desire to win?
The sign of a great leader is often more nuanced than a set of applied, outwardly facing skills or a shared attitude. Not even impressive accolades and sterling credentials are signs of a great, or even good, leader.
Great leaders are evident by the subtle ways in which they interact with a company’s three human asset groups — employees, clients, and the public. Great leaders strip away the preconceived notions of management when engaging with these human asset groups.
How do they do this? By focusing solely on the “-ment” in management. Great leaders remove the blinders of discrimination. They strip the gender (the “man” in management) and age (the “age” in management) out of the equation.
Instead of biasing, or even thinking about, a person’s worth by considering their gender or age, they try to determine how to interact and communicate with a person based on the below “-ments”. Read more »
The Death of Ecommerce Startups?
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013
Imagine having to collect and remit sales tax to hundreds of taxing authorities. For etailers, that nightmare may soon be a reality.
The last mentioned opportunity is actually not a startup yet as I am in the information-gathering stage. Whether I decide to promote it to a viable startup depends on the results of what I call my startup due diligence process.
Red Flags A Waving
As I’m going about the process of due diligence with this concept — determining whether or not this opportunity makes business sense — a big potential red flag has become apparent. This year or next, there might very well be a massive headache with respect to collecting online sales tax from out-of-state customers. Read more »
All Rise or A Standing Ovation
Monday, February 13th, 2012Last week I decided it was time for a major change in my working lifestyle. This weekend I made it happen. I spent the entire weekend offline, tearing apart my home office and working on my solution. I now have a beautiful, modern, standing desk.
To be accurate and fair, this lifestyle change was spurred on by my wife. She’s wanted a standing desk in her office for sometime. As I looked into the benefits of such a setup, I decided that I should switch to a standing desk as well. Now, both of us have a standing desk in a home office that we share.
Do You Live to Work, Or Work to Live?
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012At my previous company, my partners and I agreed on many issues. We also disagreed on a number of issues. But perhaps the biggest area of disagreement between myself and my partners was work style.
As a consulting company, we tracked each hour of each employee’s day. We knew what they did and for how long they did it. We could calculate an employee’s total number of hours worked per year, average hours worked per day/week/month, what activities they spent most of their time focused doing, and therefore, each employee’s chargeability. That is consulting slang for how much profit we could squeeze out of each lemon employee. Read more »
The Ecosphere And the Economy
Friday, December 9th, 2011One of the many joys I periodically experience is that aha moment of seeing connections within and between systems. As a trained scientist with a graduate degree in business, my insights often transcend the myopic blinders of those who remain oblivious to the larger connections on Earth. One such aha moment I had almost 20-years ago was that of the relationship between the economy and the ecosphere.
Life Is About Complex Adaptive Systems
What was the impetus behind this aha moment? In 1995 I read the first edition of the book, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin. It changed my perspective on humanity’s relationship to the ecosphere. Read more »