Reading Time: < 1 min It’s always felt to me that being transparent was a big part of being honest. It can be, but they aren’t the same thing. In his book “Lost and Founder“, author Rand Fishkin explains it this way: Transparency isn’t the same as honesty. Honesty is saying only things that are true. Many founders and startup […]
Leadership
The whirlwind is a thief
Reading Time: 2 min In reading the book “The 4 Disciplines of Execution“, they talked a lot about “the whirlwind” — all of that junk you have to do every day just to keep moving forward. This largely includes email, but also many meetings, phone calls, and other distractions. These are things that are semi-important, but they often prevent […]
Misaligned incentives
Reading Time: 2 min As a small business owner, I’m often looking for ways to better incentivize our staff to work hard and for our clients to stick with us. For our clients it’s not about “incentives”, but rather providing the right products, data and outcomes to satisfy their needs, so it’s not all that different from what an […]
Who should you really serve?
Reading Time: 2 min When working in any organization, it’s important to remember who you serve and it’s not always as obvious as it seems. Years ago when I worked at a few different churches, I went on a lot of mission trips with the high school youth groups. These trips were all still in the United States (we […]
Assigning fault versus solving problems
Reading Time: 2 min As time goes on, I’ve been finding myself caring a lot less about “who is at fault?” when something goes wrong. I’ll certainly want to investigate why something went wrong, but the who is less relevant. I’ll admit, part of this is because I’m lucky with how great our team is at GreenMellen. I’m confident […]
Serve others by taking care of yourself
Reading Time: 2 min In Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take“, he proposes that there are three kinds of people: Givers, Takers, and Matchers. The goal of the book is to show how being a giver is your best bet for long-term success and happiness. However, being a “giver” can be draining. In most studies, givers were the […]
Love is greater than hurt feelings
Reading Time: 2 min Despite the title, I’m not advocating for being a jerk, but I also think there are times when some hard truths that lead to hurt feelings can be a good thing. In Annie Duke’s excellent book “Quit“, she shares some insight on this from Daniel Kahneman: When I asked Daniel Kahneman what he thinks the […]
Mistakes versus carelessness
Reading Time: < 1 min Many times when reading books, little things pop out at me that simply help me clarify how two words relate to one another. I’ve talked about a complaint versus a problem, social networking versus social media, interpersonal empathy versus social empathy, routines versus practices, attunement versus empathy, precision versus intent, knowing versus understanding, and dozens […]
It’ll be interesting to see how you guys figure this out
Reading Time: < 1 min Bo Burlingham’s book “Small Giants” covered 14 businesses that chose to stay small, as opposed to being bought out or going public, and the things they did to help them succeed. There were a ton of great lessons in the book, and I encourage you to check it out for yourself, but a great one […]
Make the charitable assumption
Reading Time: < 1 min It’s easy to make assumptions about other people. If someone is short with you, they might be a jerk. Or maybe they just lost their job, or lost a friend. It’s hard to know for sure, but if your initial thought is always that they must just be a jerk, that’s generally a bad outlook […]