Manage Your Capacity, Not Your Time
The internet is full of opinions about how to manage your time. There are even whole books written on it. However, they miss an important nuance: it’s not the quantity of time that you are able to juggle, assign and manage that matters, it’s the quality of the time that you are able to spend on your tasks.
^ADJ: This would have to be one of my favourite articles, as it makes things very real - especially on the point of the ability to do only so many hours (3-4 per day) of real impactful work! Logging your time and working out what affects your energy levels can be a gamechanger!
How to Build a Great Relationship with a Mentor
While 76% of working professionals believe that a mentor is important to growth, more than 54% do not have such a relationship. If you’re one of these people, there are a few things you can do to find a mentor and build a strong relationship: define your goals and specific needs; write a “job description” for your ideal mentor; search for mentors through your second-degree network; make the ask (and keep it simple); have a first meeting; create a mentorship agreement; and follow up to say thank you over the long term.
^ADJ: Here is the key point "Mentors can be from anywhere. They can be from your LinkedIn network, professional connections, or people you’ve met at conferences. It’s important to remember that while people are certainly busy, being asked to be a mentor is a massive compliment."
Stop putting excuses in the way, reach out and start making a difference.
What makes a strategy great
Strategy is: How we will win.
^ADJ: Some great takeouts:
Great strategies accomplish demonstrating "how will we win", with the following characteristics:
Simple: Reshapes complexity to be manageable and actionable. Candid: Dares to spotlight the most difficult truths. Decisive: Asserts clear decisions and accepts their consequences. Leveraged: Magnifies strengths into durable competitive advantage. Asymmetric: Defeats uncertainty with higher upside than downside. Futuristic: Solves for the long-term.
Lessons from Large Family Firms About Choosing a CEO
Family businesses are infamous for nepotism and infighting, especially when it’s time to appoint a new CEO. But when global talent adviser Claudio Fernández-Aráoz and colleagues set out to help family firms improve their leadership transitions, they were surprised to find that large family businesses had much better succession practices than their nonfamily counterparts, and they outperformed on several measures after new appointees took the reins.
^ADJ: Family Business is hard, but when you get it right, incredible results can be achieved across multiple dimensions (not just profit or balance sheet measures). I have certainly seen the impact that "engaged long-term directors" can have when empowered to bring about succession and change.
Cloudflare Radar - 2023 Year in Review
Worldwide trends that shaped our Internet in 2023 from Cloudflare.
^ADJ: Three things to take note of:
42% of Traffic comes from Mobile Devices - that is significant! Implications: the importance of having websites that display and perform well cross-platform and multi-device
All business segments are vulnerable and attacked
50% of malicious emails contained a deceptive link
100 tiny changes to transform your life: from the one-minute rule to pyjama yoga
Want more health and happiness in the year ahead – without having to work too hard? Here are tried and tested tweaks that can lead to big improvements