There was a time when a day never had enough hours. I’d start work at 7 or 8 in the morning, checking emails right after waking up. I’d either skip lunch, have it at my desk, or have it during a meeting. By the time I realized it’s already 7pm, I’d have gotten to less than half of my day’s to-do list. And I loved it. Working gave me purpose. A busy day like that made me feel important and valuable. Until it didn’t. My…
I acknowledge we all share different priorities, backgrounds, and ambitions, leading to very different career outlooks. I’m thus not going to answer the above question for anyone else but myself. I do find it important to address this topic in the context of startup leadership. Moving on opens up an opportunity for others, while allowing ourselves to tackle new challenges. It helps everyone realize more of their potential. What I’ve realized in asking myself this question is that there’s never just one motive. Deciding to…
These days, companies large and small have an insane amount of data to help with decision making. A small mom and pop restaurant with a cloud based reservation system can forecast how much ingredients to order for the week. Yet we all still make bad decisions. Why? First of all, let’s not blame the data. By itself, data can’t do anything. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s us. That’s right: the human beings behind the data. We are the ones that…
In a previous post, I discussed a tendency for startup teams to be blindly optimistic. So today I’m going to share a simple exercise to help check our blind spots when taking decisions. We start by asking ourselves… … how do we tend to react by default? Understanding our default behavior provides critical details on who we are, what we stand for, and how we behave in our job. It helps us acknowledge where we stand, and whether we’re going in the desired direction. By…
We had missed our quarterly sales target. Again. The news was given during a company all-hands. All over the room, I saw people staring at our CEO, not sure how to react. Frustrated, confused, and scared. We had extremely ambitious targets to begin with, as is the case with most VC backed companies. Most individuals knew we’d be lucky to meet them. Yet as results were announced, we all felt like failures. In the following weeks, the mood in the house was grimmer…