Leadership Tactic #56: The Value of Facetime
Today at work, schedule lunch in the near future with a coworker with whom you’ve never chatted one-on-one for more than a few minutes. You’d be amazed at what a little facetime can do. Two years ago at my full-time job, one of our interns would come into my office about twice a week to [...]
3 Ways to Be Productive When You Don’t Want to Work
We all have those days–perhaps even periods throughout every day–when we’re easily distracted. We know we should be working because we have work to do, but we find every excuse not to do work. Then we end up cramming in the items on our to-do list at the end of the day, or we just [...]
5 Management Lessons from Michael Scott
With his departure from The Office last Thursday, Michael Scott leaves behind a legacy of bad management and good humor. I think the show will be just fine with him gone, yet his final episode episode moved me to tears. In honor of him, I’d like to ignore the myriad of poor leadership tactics he [...]
Leadership Tactic #47: 10,000 Hours
Malcolm Gladwell writes about the concept that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice can make you great…at anything. He uses the examples of Bill Gates, who started working with computers for hours each day when he was a boy, and the Beatles, who played long, long sets every night to make ends meet early on. A [...]
Management Tactic #46: The Easter Basket
When I was about 11 years old, my family piled into our minivan and took a trip down to Florida. It was spring break, and we were going to Disney World. We stayed with my aunt and uncle in Florida for a few days over the Easter weekend. I remember being surprised at how little [...]
Leadership Tactic #45: How to Enchant the Pants Off Someone
A few months ago, I saw one of my favorite types of promotions for new books: An author named Guy Kawasaki was giving away copies of his new book, Enchantment, to bloggers if they agreed to review the book. (My publishing company does something similar with advance reader copies of our books.) I signed up [...]
Management Tactic #44: Be Different
A while back, I posted about my love for a website called Kickstarter. It’s a site for raising funds for any project. You ask people to support you, you give them things in exchange for their support, and if you don’t raise as much money as you needed, nobody pays anything. Here’s a really cool [...]
Leadership Tactic #43: Yes; and…
A few weeks ago, my roommate (an actress) and I were discussing the merits of “yes; and…” “Yes; and…” is a technique used in improvisational comedy to keep the sketch moving forward. You’re constantly building off of what the previous person said, no matter how ridiculous it was. By leading with “yes,” you’re not only [...]
Leadership Tactic #42: Whiteyboard
For a while now, I’ve been trying to turn my bedroom wall into a whiteboard. My original motivation for doing this was to help map out short stories. My short-story writing process usually involves brainstorming on a piece of paper for a while before writing the story. While pencil and paper are good for this [...]
Leadership Tactic #41: The Infographic Pitch
About a month ago, I read an entry on the 37Signals blog about the very first version of Meetup.com, a website that helps people connect with groups of other people in their area with similar interests. Here’s how the site was originally conceived: That’s it. So simple, right? It may not be a 100% accurate [...]
Leadership Tactic #40: I Am Responsible
I read an article the other day on how to apologize to someone. The best part was that it’s not a true apology there’s a “but” in there. “I’m sorry I’m late, but traffic was terrible.” Nope. That’s an excuse. For an apology, you remove the second clause. No but. When I was a teenager, [...]
Leadership Tactic #39: Broadcast Altruism
I used to think that the best way to be a good person was to do good things and not take credit for them. Take ego out of the equation and anonymously help other people, improve the world, do your siblings’ chores, etc. But I’m officially changing my stance on that philosophy. I say if [...]
Management Tactic #37: Funerals
A coworker once gave me some simple advice that I’ll never forget: You may regret not going to a funeral or wake, but you’ll never regret going to one. Remember this advice. You will need it, because you will rarely be eager to attend a funeral. You’ll avoid it. You’ll find excuses not to go. [...]
Management Tactic #36: The Power of Perks
The other day I got a call from my insurance agent. She said that in honor of Thanksgiving, she was calling all her clients to thank them for their loyalty (I’ve been with her for a while, probably close to 8 years). Then she asked if I were available on November 19 at 7:00 pm [...]
Groupon: The Infinite Buffet
Back in June, I got the barbershop for which I write a monthly newsletter on Groupon (as I wrote about here). The goal was to increase permanent customers by about 20% by getting them in the door on a good deal. A deal for which we were losing money. Did we achieve that goal? We [...]
Management Tactic #35: Ignore Your Biggest Responsibility
Here’s a simple test to see if you are a great leader instead of just a good one: Think of your biggest responsibility at your job. The most important project, the one thing that you have to get done right and on time. Place yourself on one of those days when your biggest responsibility is [...]
Management Tactic #33: Don’t Make Lemonade
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I completely disagree. Case in point: I have been planning and organizing a huge fundraiser for my job over the last 11 months. A key component of this job is the auction, for which many of the items come in at the last minute. I log these items [...]
Management Tactic #32: Vacate the Vacation Policy
One of the big perks about my job is that I get a lot of vacation days. If you can believe it, I have too many vacation days. I value days off for travel, family, friends, and writing, but I find myself struggling to use them all. Which seems crazy, right? Most of you probably [...]
ENTJ…Wait, What?
I recently asked my staff to take the Myers-Briggs personality indicator test. We’re going to have a session led by a trained counselor so we can understand each other better and work together as best as possible as a staff. I took the test 3 years ago when I started the job. At the time, [...]
No One Decides Quickly and Everyone’s a Good Friend
…or a more boring title would be “Survey Results.” Because that’s what today is all about. I want to thank everyone who took my crazy little survey last week. 47 people filled it out, and the 23rd person (you know who you are) was randomly selected by random.org to receive my copy of Rework by [...]
Rework Contest and Survey
Two things happened to me almost simultaneously a few weeks ago: I had a really interesting idea for a new type of job search website, and I began reading a fantastic book about starting a business and being creative. The book is called Rework, by 37Signals CEO Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, and I [...]
Management Tactic #13: The Freedom of Limitations
Whenever I go home to Virginia, I play pickup soccer with my father. His pickup game is played on a real soccer field with marked sidelines and goals. We play 11 or 12 people per side, and people generally spread out across the field. I always walk away from the Virginia pickup game feeling like [...]
Management Tactic #30: Dream Big
A few weeks ago, my friend Bryce and I were talking about the point of NASA, or the lack thereof. I posed the question: Why do so many of our tax dollars go to a program that looks to outer space when we have plenty of issues down here on earth? Bryce had a really [...]
Management Tactic #5: Be. On. Time.
This may be the most important leadership post I’ve written so far. It’s not getting the #1 slot because I’m sure there’s something better for that, and slots 2-4 are already taken. So #5 it is. I’m going to share two things with you in this post: One, why you shouldn’t be late. Two, the [...]
