The Critical Startup Skills You Might Be Overlooking
^ADJ: Some really useful tips, especially how to attract more specific feedback!
Stop Overcomplicating It: The Simple Guidebook to Upping Your Management Game
“Instead of just more opinions, we need a simpler leadership approach that measurably and predictably delivers more engaged employees and better business results,” says Laraway.
^ADJ: Some great takeaways from the article, and I would encourage you to read the book. I really like the section on Ruthless Prioritisation, in my work I see this as a problem all the time (and inadvertently may contribute to it).
Ruthless prioritization: “I believe priorities is one of the most misused words in tech. People often say their task list is their priorities — wrong. Prioritization is an exercise in subtraction, not an exercise in addition. If you have more than three priorities in a week, you don’t have any. You just have a task list,” he says. “I find folks often nod their heads that prioritization matters, but then go on chasing workstreams that just don’t matter. It’s about focusing on a very small number of things that matter to the business, being most effective at those things, and perhaps recapturing some work-life sanity.”
In Search of Lost Focus | Dropbox
Our respondents believe they are more focused while working remotely and spend more time on deeply focused work. Although focus is one of the most significant challenges in knowledge work, improving it represents a $1.2trn growth opportunity for the US economy.
^ADJ: Useful executive summary, we need to think more about this in our Design of work, and the environments we deliberately create to harness the best work from our people.
How to present to executives
The foundation of communicating effectively with executives is to get a clear understanding of why you’re communicating with them in the first place. You might be used to communicating with folks to change their mind or inform them about your project, but that’s probably not the case here. When you’re communicating with an executive, it’s almost always one of three things: planning, reporting on status, or resolving misalignment.
^ADJ: This is one of my current bugbears, I get wound up when slides get spoken to extensively, when the majority of the content could be pre reading. Good article on some of the basics to think about.
How fresh thinking paid off at a fast food giant
McDonald’s began as a company that set the standards. Over time, though, tastes changed and expectations rose. McDonald’s didn’t do enough to keep pace …
^ADJ: An interesting insight into the turn around of an iconic brand - getting back to basics, and looking at different business models in different geographies.