Fantasy team for web startups

Having started a few small self promotional websites, my interest was peaked by this article. The bottom line from the article is, if you're going to do a web startup, the best skillsets for your core team listed in order of importance:

1. Developer: A real geek that knows JAVA, XML, HTML etc.
2. Designer: Good user interface designer
3. Inbound Marketer/Recruiter: Someone who knows how to find and attract skilled people.
4. Sales Person: That would be me.

Of course if a person possessed more than one of these skills listed, they would be a very valuable person! You can read more about it here: http://bit.ly/liwebmix

Response: A key to happiness

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.
-Victor E. Fankl

How to develop a startup culture

I found this article developed by the talented people at Netflix. It explains how to develop an effective startup culture. See Article: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

Thanksgiving is the best time to network

There is no feeling that is more universal and that builds rapport more than the feeling of gratitude. I learned this lesson again when I received this email the day before Thanksgiving from my local Dale Carnegie chapter, reminding me to wish my collegues a very Happy Thanksgiving. I was amazed how much goodwill can be generated in so short a time with managers, customers, and collegues that are so important to my future.

This got me thinking about other optimal times to network. For example, at the end of the work day, do you race away from work without saying goodbye to your co-workers, managers? What about on Fridays when everyone else is eager to go home for the weekend?

I once heard that people are better at remembering what happens very first in the day, and what happens last, but the middle can be a blurr. This makes me think that Monday morning is a great time to market yourself...just as Friday afternoon is.

Also, what about networking at meetings, do you show up in time to do a little hob nobbing before hand? ...just some food for thought.

Enthusiasm!!!

Thomas Edison describes the ultimate bequethal.

"When a man dies, if he can pass enthusiasm along to his children, he has left them an estate of incalculable value."
~ Thomas Edison

Are you a Farmer or a Hunter?

I read this very interesting article on http://www.theladders.com/ and it got me thinking about the different kinds of personality traits that help a person excel in their career.

The opener question, "Are you a Hunter or a Farmer" is such a great question. I decided to think about that one for a while before reading the article. Then I read this article. I thought it provided a lot of insights into the kind of person I am and how my personality traits can sometimes help and/or hinder my career path. Read this discussion on Linkedin...

One who dares!!!

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." -Teddy Roosevelt

Do good ideas have a minimum 2-week germination period?

I've noticed that many thought processes follow this pattern. For example, it takes 21 days to make or break a habit (ie build new neural pathways, muscle memory etc). I see that most of my breakthrough ideas in the past, I've stewed on for a couple of weeks before having that eureka moment when the ideas become actionable.

Secondly, if this theory is true, how many "seed" ideas do we need to plant in order to get a good harvest. Or what amount of nurturing is needed to get the idea to actually go through germination, and actually getting to the point of producing good results? Here's a few insightful answer that were gleened from my favorite Professional Network.

UPDATE: A friend pointed me to a found an interesting article today on Wall Street Journal talking about this very topic.

BOOK REPORT: Managing Oneself

Part of the Harvard Business Review series, Managing Oneself is an excellent and fast book to read packed with insights about how to understand your best skills and abilities using various tools. One key idea presented was the introduction of keeping a journal as a feedback mechanism to measure yourself in key performance areas and conducting some honest and introspective detective work. Doing this will help to you to play to your strengths and talents thereby promoting your career!!!

I love this little book. It was written by a very talented and acomplished HR professional, and consequently has a lot of information packed into just a few words.

BOOK REPORT: The Great Depression Ahead

If you can get past the ominous title, you see that Dent hits another home run with The Greatest Depression Ahead book. Extremely well written, Dent's book includes the same theme as his other book, Great Boom Ahead, 1992. He goes into more detail discussing the shorter time horizon associated with the current economic contraction. He also has a lot more data and charts to back up his demographically based economic theories.

New insights gained from his latest book can be summarized as follows:

1. Economic contractive period to have an intermediate bottom at 2012 and again near 2018 with first significant recovery starting in 2023.
   
2. Inflation presure will result from stimulus in fall 2009 into early 2010. Then deflation will persist beginning strongly near mid 2010 and possibly as early as fall 2009 for several years.
   
3. Gold will not be a safe haven according to Dent.


4. Dow bottom near 4800 near the late 2009 to 2010 period (but Dent has a history of over predicting the magnitude of market fluctuations).


5. Home Prices within the low end of the range (starter homes) will hit bottom and start to recover around 2013


6. Trade up homes, vacation homes, and McMansions will recover after small homes do ...probably around Spring 2014.


7. Agriculture and Energy will rise significanlty in 2009 and 2010. Ag business and Energy stocks will outperform market over the long term based on reaching maximum oil output combined with continued political strife in middle east.

Dent's book comes when there is a lot of questions about the future of the economy. One point of debate is whether we are facing inflation or deflation in the future. While it's not a simple either/or question, Dent seems to down play risks associated with inflation saying that deflation is going to be the longer term trend. This seems like a point of debate since current Federal debt levels are up to $30k/person -a strong indicator for the inflation trend in the near term.

He also includes a new trend that helps him predict wars and politcal conflict by using what he calls his geo-political cycle trend, which while interesting seems to be a little harder to understand than the tried and true babyboomer spending wave. Dent's main thesis continues to hold true and I love his arguments on the Baby Boomer driven economy. 4 stars.

Do you listen with "The third ear, the heart"?

Stephen R. Covey in his book, Spiritual Roots of Human Relations (1975) discusses the importance of listening to others with "the third ear, the heart". On page 107 he writes: "A person needs to express himself freely and fully, without fear of ridicule or embarrassment or censure. He will likely then become open to influence and to reasoning. You may think you understand, and in fact even without listening you might actually understand what is going on, but the other person may not feel understood until he has expressed himself. To him, his problem is unique. It's different. And you just can't simply categorize and generalize."

How do you strike the root of the problem!

For every thousand men hacking at the leaves, there is one striking at the root of the problem (adapted from Henry Thoreau).

The last book I read, Spiritual Roots, touches on a topic that I use in my professional life every day called "Root cause analysis" (RCA). Covey also uses root cause analysis to sort out behavioral problems, although he never really calls it RCA. Basically the way root cause analysis works is that you keep asking the question "Why does this happen" over and over again until the last answer is repeated twice, then you have arrived at the very "Root Cause" of your problems. So in a family situation the analysis could go like this, for example: 1. "Why doesn't my son listen to me (this is the observed symptom), because (fill in the blank ............. with a direct cause). 2. Why does the direct cause happen (rember it is very likely just another symptom of an underlying problem or cause) fill in the blank........... 3. Repeat this line of questioning until you repeat the answer twice. When you get to that point, you have gone beyond just the symptoms and arrived at the very root cause of the problem.

This sounds very simple and it is in some ways. I hope this is something that can help you. This is a great tool to use in many situations in life, whether it's investing in the stock market, or trying to have better peace and happiness in home. A continuation of this discussion can be found at Linkedin. Read further...

BOOK REPORT: Spiritual Roots of Human Relations

Stephen R. Covey is best known for his writing Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which has sold a whopping 10 million copies according to Amazon. The book that was the seed for Seven Habits, probably was another less known book also written by Stephen R. Covey in his forties titled, Spritual Roots of Human Relations.

I recently made a study of his book, Spiritual Roots and found it to be very inspiring and thought provoking. The copy I read was the same one my Dad read when he was exactly my age and so it was neat to see the passages that he underlined. Spritual Roots introduces many of the "Self help" concepts covered in more detail in the Seven Habits, and it takes a more spiritual approach.

One line from the book, "Every interpersonal, leadership, and social problem is actually a spiritual or moral problem." In a day when talking about spirituality is overly-taboo, Spiritual Roots is a refreshing read and insightful in the way it links undesireable behaviors and the underlying or hidden spiritual problems. Great application to family life, work life, and just life in general. In upcoming posts, I plan to write about certain insights gained from reading this book. Read more...

How do you apply the 80/20 rule in life?

Leadership requires the ability to prioritize. One way to prioritize is to use the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule basically says, that 20 percent of what you do produces 80 percent of the results of what you do. So if you can figure out what that special 20 percent is, then you can prioritize your life a little better to achieve success.

I brought this question up on my favorite discussion forum and there were many insights presented. The best insight of all was Gerard Byrne, a business analyst at Meteor Mobile, who said that if you can find out the top of the top 20 percent or 20% squared, then you can get 64% of your current results from only 4% of your efforts. Of course this is a bit of a generalization but it's a fun way to think about prioritizing your time. Especially for a math geek like me. Please read further...

John Wayne acted like a Leader

What an icon of leadership. Wayne is good for a lot of leadership oriented quotations. I know after a great acting career, he spent many years giving commencment addresses at graduations and universities. I'm sure some of this material comes from those speeches, but some comes from his movies too. He is a great character that we can all learn from. The following are some great quotes attributable to this desparato:

• Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway. John Wayne
  

• If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?' John Wayne

• If you've got them by the ['pportant appendage] their hearts and minds will follow. John Wayne
  
  
• Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid. John Wayne
  
  
• Talk low, talk slow and don't say too much. John Wayne
  
  
• Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday. John Wayne
  
  
• Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday. John Wayne

Are you a Leader in Theory or in Practice?

Leadership development inevitably includes a discussion of both leadership theory and practice. But the past few weeks, I've observed a very interesting phenomenon in leaders that I work closely with: that many effective leaders tend to use primarily just one of the two skillsets, displaying very different styles of leadership. I've discovered that some tend to be what I call "Thinkerleaders" and others tend to be "Doerleaders".

To generalize, the Thinkerleaders seem to have the ability to communicate in terms of theories or "possibilities". These are the blue sky builders, idea-men; they are full of lots of insight and understanding about formulas and approaches I can take to help push the envelope of what is possible.

Doerleaders tend to be in-touch with the day-to-day challenges of execution and are very good at assessing risk in the execution of any given business plan, or strategy because they have hands-on knowlege and are willing to think about pros-and cons concurrently. Many times they've been in the trenches, and have sound knowlege of implementation steps and the ripple effects that result from a broken process and/or poor communication. They also often perhaps do not explore deeply, certain possibilities that they feel may include too much risk.

Thinkerleaders talk, and Doer leaders walk. Do you agree with this generalization -in general? Please read more....

How do you develop yourself as a leader?

Planting the seeds of success consistently in ones life eventually leads to a discussion of leadership development. Ron Hurst, a fellow engineer and networking acquaintance of mine, posed this question recently, "How do you develop yourself as a leader?". I provided Ron my point of view on it, and he decided to publish part of my answer on his blog.

Several other professionals joined in the conversation and there seemed to emerge a common theme that leadership development requires real life leadership experiences and learning to use the faculties of the heart in everthing we do. Success begets success. Please read more...

Planting the "Seeds of Success"

Some of the best metaphors/analogies/lessons for life can be learned while working in the garden. I remember as a boy having to pick rocks out of the family garden, racking and weeding and finally planting seeds. I say "finally planting seeds" because that is where my work usually ended.

As an adult, I've come to learn there is a lot more work involved than just planting seeds if you want to enjoy the fruits of success. Just like a garden, you have to nurture and protect those seeds from intruders. Like the weeds in a garden, we need to be able to identifty early threats that would try to thwart our success.

Spring cleaning -and another job hunt.

As a father for four growing kids I am finding that the monthly outflow of money seems to be growing faster than normal pay raises can keep up with. So now I'm in the process of "upgrading" my employment.

For me this usually means searching for jobs or getting promoted in my current function. Searching for jobs can be tough work all by itself, especially when there's a layoff involved. Fortunately, there's no layoff this time and this is about the fourth time I've been through the process so I've learned to use some good principles like networking, resume building, and marketing myself.

EMPLOYMENT RECIPE

My complete employment recipe explains the job hunt process I go through in detail. It comes from my own experience, which has resulted in at least two substantial raises during my career including one that was 27% one year.

STANDOUT RESUME
In addition to following the recipe mentioned above, having good resume. I found an excellent online tutorial for writing a standout resume.

In addition to the tutorial above, there are three things to make sure is communicated through your resume.

1. I am the perfect candidate for THIS particular job


2. I possess the right mix of skills/attributes to be successful in THIS particular job


3. And most overlooked....the resume should demonstrate that you have invested a tremendous amount of resources into my preparation for this job...which will also prove that you are a good investment.

JOB WEBSITES & RESOURCES:

I've compiled my own personal database of sites on the web where I can find good engineering jobs. I hope this list can help some of my friends in the Northwest area.

Do you have a well defined "Take it easy policy"

Do you have a 'Take it easy Policy'? Being a Father of four, I find that I must continually review my "Take it easy Policy". When the storms of life are gathering, it's important to remember that you're not defined by what happens TO you but by how you handle it. At times like this, it becomes very important how we excercising our freewill.

Part of success in reaching goals is understanding how to deal with storms and discouragements that inevitably come along the way toward success. We must "See the light" behind the mountain in front of us.