Monday, December 28, 2015

How To Spend Your Last Week of 2015

It's here! The last and final week of the year 2015. If you work in a corporate environment, chances are your office looks a little like a ghost town this week. When I was younger, I used to love working the last week of the year as the general office drama was lower than any other point, and I could focus and get some things done. But what to do? As the clock winds down, try a few of these activities over the next couple of days.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I hope you are having a wonderful week! For the past 36 hours or so, I hope you have been following along with my Christmas Playlist over at Twitter (just search for #CameronsChristmasPlaylist).

So, what are you getting for Christmas? Are you getting yourself a little something to go along with the gifts to others?

I've read a few folks lately talking about the "greatest gift you can give yourself" and, honestly, it's true.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Happy Holidays! And a Christmas Bonus

Happy Holidays! December has been a bit of a crazy month, and I'll admit, you haven't heard all that much from me on the blog here. But I thought I would take a little bit of time and thank you for following me on this crazy experiment this year, and wish you and your family a happy holiday season, whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or another holiday.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Hosting a Professional Conference

I spent a large portion of last week at Gartner's Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference contained three days of in depth content around Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Development, Microservices and API Management, and more. But rather than dive into the technical details, which I may write about later, I thought I would point out a few hallmarks of the conference that really made it smooth and helpful for the attendees. In the event you ever need to put together an event like this, see if any of these lessons from the best might be helpful.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Don't Threaten the King and Other Medieval Lessons from Game of Thrones

Evidently, I am going to have to wait until April to watch the next season of Game of Thrones, but in the meantime, I can still theorize on how the complex social interactions it portrays could be interpreted in a business sense.

While (hopefully) no one literally gets their head chopped off at your office, even the most open environments have some levels of politics at play. People have desires and ambitions, and sometimes those wants can cause behavior reminiscent of medieval fiefdoms. So how can you navigate the landscape?

Friday, November 27, 2015

Marketing Tricks To Learn From Black Friday

It's BLACK FRIDAY, which means that thousands will be already up and out of the house shopping for deals by the time this post hits the web. One of the largest retail days of the year, Black Friday offers opportunities to score some really great deals. It also offers up the opportunity to recognize some key marketing tricks, which you can leverage for your business at other times of the year. Try to see if you can recognize how the most successful retailers utilize these and brainstorm how you might use them to help your own business.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you are able to enjoy time with family and friends and reflect momentarily on what you have that you can appreciate. We all have so many blessings and sometimes the small stresses of the world can get in the way of remembering that.

I'm thankful for my family and friends and so many other things. This year, though, I am also thankful that I have been able to share quite a bit through this site. I hope there are many more to come!

Have a happy holiday.

Image credit: Schmucki via Pixabay

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Seeing The Bigger Picture

You have certainly heard the expression, "can't see the forest for the trees." The statement implies that someone focuses completely on the tactical items and has a difficulty or fault in observing the big picture.

But how can you avoid being the person having difficulty seeing the forest? What if you are the one scratching on the bark of an elm tree and telling everyone it is important? Here are some questions that can help you get to a bigger vision.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Where Does Your Time Go?

Have you ever reached the end of a week and thought to yourself, "Where did all of my time go?"

We've all been there. The weeks that appear to be the most busy can disappoint the most when at the end, you realize you have not accomplished anything you can recall worthwhile.

How can you command control of your time, to avoid it slipping away? Here are a few tips to keep the time from slipping through your fingers as easily as sand through an hourglass.

Monday, November 23, 2015

6 Tips to Engage Your Audience

You thought you had your speech worked out perfectly. The content, the cadence, and the visual aids all aligned perfectly. And yet, just a few minutes into your presentation, you start to notice a few audience members glazing over or nodding off.

How can you keep them plugged in? The good news is that you have several tools at your disposal that can help pull the audience in and keep them in. Some of them require preparation, so they might not all be an on-the-fly fix, but they can all help engage your audience.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

What's the Most Important Thing to Work On Today?

Last week I attended a training teaching how to improve the quality of our conversations by focusing on the most important topic to discuss. Great session, to say the least, but it also got me thinking about how that hyperfocus could help in other areas. For instance, asking "What's the most important thing to work on today?" to get started in the morning.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Book: The Phoenix Project

So, the latest book I checked out happened to actually be a fiction book. More accurately, it's a nonfiction walkthrough of how to transform an IT department towards DevOps concepts wrapped in a novel that pays repeated homage to The Goal, a book I read in my Operations Management class in college.

Remember, as always, links in my book posts are affiliate links and I make the smallest amount of money possible if you were to actually buy this book.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

What's the Scariest Thing in Business?

Last weekend, we saw little ghouls and goblins racing around the neighborhood in search of candy. As an adult, you likely weren't afraid. You probably didn't even jump when you were rewatching Halloween and Michael Myers jumped out to attack Jamie Lee Curtis.

In fact, as adults, we have conditioned ourselves to not fear imaginary and pretend villains or ghosts. We save our fear for real threats, most of which get recapped on the nightly news. But we also fear some intangibles that, in the end, boil down to one thing: a fear of failure.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Starting Anew

Starting new projects always excites me. The potential that the new project has to be something great, the allure of learning along the way, and the anticipation of change from whatever path I had been previously walking all give a thrilling boost of confidence to the beginning of a new challenge.

Somewhere along the way, the shiny newness fades and the project transforms into real work. At that point, you may be tempted most strongly to abandon the project and start another new initiative. Doing so only guarantees that you fail to finish the first project.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

How to Hire the Right Person (Hint: Flip a Coin)

Hiring the right person can prove to be one of the most difficult challenges for a manager, new or old. I've had every possible outcome from hiring over the years.

I've hired someone who performed very differently on phone technical screens than on the job and spent a ton of effort trying to coach to skills that should have been brought into the job.

I've hired superstars.

I've hired people based on the recommendations of others, with mixed results.

I've hired people multiple times for different positions, where they excelled in some and less so in others.

At times, I have thought hiring might be as accurate as a coin flip.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Is This Going to Be On the Test?

"Is this going to be on the test?" I can still hear my classmates (and me) as we asked that same question of various teachers. The intent, of course, was to try to see if we could get some inside track that would help us to maximize the effort we spent studying the things that would be on the test, while totally ignoring those things that would not.

The teachers rarely gave us a straight answer, though, and with good reason. Their expectation was that we treated all of the material in the class as if it were part of the test. As such, we were always paying attention and learning as much as we could.

Monday, October 26, 2015

What's Your Minimum Viable Business?

Are you familiar with the concept of a minimum viable product? Basically, the product contains the core features and functionality required to launch, and nothing more. I've seen it misinterpreted in a way to try to deliver the minimum amount of work, but it truly should include the core required features regardless of the amount of work involved.

Over the weekend, though, I wondered: what would it take to create a minimum viable business? What required features would be needed to launch a business? If you thought about your business idea this way would it allow you the same benefits - to test ideas with minimal investment, maximize ability to capitalize on feedback, and speed the time to market? I came up with two key components. That's correct, just two.

Friday, October 23, 2015

What's The Big Idea?

I decided to approach a meeting recently in a new way. We had some topics to try to brainstorm around, and I had an inkling that the results would end up in some of the "usual suspects" of conclusions and actions, only to lead to the same results that caused us to need new ideas in the first place. What was the new way? Thinking big.

Before the meeting, I took the agenda and brainstormed myself five "big ideas" around each topic. The goal? To drive the conversation in a direction it would not have naturally flowed.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Death to the Autoresponder

Last week I wrote about the different challenges that I learned about through use of a Twitter autoresponder that I had been sending to each of my new followers. It proved to be an interesting experience, but on Friday, I decided ro remove that autoresponder on Friday, though, based on a couple of responses I got Thursday and Friday. One misinterpreted my question as some sort of a sales pitch (I'm not really selling anything - yet) and the other one somehow didn't get my autoresponder joke that accompanied the autoresponder.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

What's Your Conversion Rate?

You can measure any number of metrics, as thousands exist for you to choose from. In most businesses, though, one metric stands out as the first you should really get a handle on: your conversion rate.

Monday, October 19, 2015

When Goliath Eats Goliath

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know that I am a fan of beer. Usually, I'm seeking out some delicious craft beer when I am not brewing my own. I will, of course, consume a Bud Light hanging with friends, but I do generally seek out what I perceive as tastier options from some of the craft breweries popping up around the country (and several here locally in Dallas). However, the news story that Anheuser-Busch InBev last week made an offer to purchase SABMiller did not fly under the radar. The deal would reportedly give the merged company 60 percent of the global beer market and put them in charge of the top brands in the U.S. including Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite, unless challenged by the courts.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Building Your Team Around a Star Recruit

Every now and then, managers are faced with a unique opportunity: building a team from scratch. Usually, though, they are expanding slightly or replacing someone who has left the team, voluntarily or not. In some cases, the team acquires an extremely talented individual, which may require rethinking how to continue to build the team to function most efficiently. I may have been watching too much football lately, but most of the coaches and managers have the right idea on this front, namely, to build the team around the star recruit. But as a manager, how do you craft the team that way? Here are some ideas that can help you maximize the potential of your organization.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Challenges and Change

A few weeks ago I tried an experiment. I set up an autoresponder on Twitter for the new people that were following me. I normally don't like autoresponders, but I thought I would give one a try and see if I could engage some people in conversation.

Basically, my autoresponder message asks all new followers what one thing could they change about their business to make the most impact.

The first thing I learned is that responses to autoresponders is incredibly low. I think I maybe got about 3 replies out of every 20 or 30 people. But I did learn some interesting things about what challenges entrepreneurs in the community.

Friday, October 9, 2015

Survey Results!

Back around 100 posts in the middle of August, I surveyed you, the audience, to get some sense of who you are and what you like or dislike about the blog. It's been a while, but I thought it might be fun to share some of the results now that I've closed the survey down.

I'll save the marketing demographic results, except to note that it was interesting to me to know that about half of you are likely reading this on your laptop and the other half are staring at your phone right now. So hi there! I've put a few links in here to tweet at me and let me know your thoughts. Feel free to use them!

Thursday, October 8, 2015

5 More Tips To Be a Smoother Speaker

A couple of weeks ago, I gave you a few ideas on how you could become much more comfortable and natural as a public speaker. Everyone gets called on to speak, and how you execute a speech or presentation can have implications for your career, determining whether you make the sale, communicate what you need to on the project, or teach the masses what they came to hear you talk about. Chances are, you will need to speak in public, so here are five more tips to make it go well.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

How to Get Away With Murder(ing Your Meetings)

I've written a few posts now on meetings, the omnipresent bane of office workers everywhere. We all hate them, and yet often, we all attend them without question. We sit through "death by PowerPoint" where slide after slide presents so little value to propelling business forward. We engage in endless discussion, entertaining the whims of those that just want to discuss rather than do. We allow meetings to clog as much as four out of five days on some of our calendars. So here's a thought: kill your meetings. Want to know how to get away with their murders? Try some of these tactics.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

4 Tips to Make Sure You Don't Waste Already Wasted Time

On Monday, I talked a little bit about wasting time and procrastinating, along with my favorite ways to do so. Today, I'll talk about my favorite time to not waste: wait time. The picture on the left is the line that was in front of me at Chipotle yesterday for lunch. As you can see, there are at least twenty-five people that like their burritos or burrito bowls as much as I do and who arrived before I did. This meant a solid fifteen minutes of waiting in line before I could haul my fifteen pound burrito back to the office. So I took advantage of the situation and made it productive time. I managed to catch up on email, engage with some people on Twitter, take a photo and make notes about today's post all before I had to make the vital decision between chicken and carnitas.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Recruiting For The Team You Have

At some point, every manager has a hole in their team that they need to fill. Hiring great candidates challenges even the most tenured manager, and several situations necessitate making sure that the new hire fits perfectly with the team that you already have in place. Here's how you can ensure that your new hire complements your established team.

Monday, September 28, 2015

What's Your Favorite Way to Waste Time?

The Fall television schedule has started up, with new shows like Blindspot and The Muppets now rapidly filling up my DVR to capacity. In these first few weeks of the season, we try out several new shows and get hooked on a few. While there are several we won't like after a couple of episodes and several that will get cancelled, for these first few weeks, we watch those as well, sucking up a bit more time than we would normally give to the television.

Friday, September 25, 2015

7 Ways Scott Sigler Has Earned Rabid Fans

Everyone in the marketing game wants a following. You need more than just an audience, though. You need an army. You need customers and fans of your work that are hungry and eager for every single product you sell, and who evangelize your products to other potential customers. Everyone wants and needs this type of a following, but how do you actually get one?
Scott Sigler - Courtesy Empty Set Entertainment
Photo credit: Joan Allen Photography

One person who has successfully built a pretty devoted following is New York Times best-selling novelist Scott Sigler. His fans, whom he identifies and who self-identify as "junkies," are in a sense just that: addicts for his writing and stories. I know, because even though I don't generally read horror or science fiction, I find myself telling others about Sigler more often than I recommend any other product by any other producer (so there's your caveat, I'm a junkie, too). Timing-wise, Scott struck a perfect storm with the launch of his podcast years and years ago, which you would find impossible to reproduce in today's podcast-saturated market. Still, there are several traits to the way that he and his business partner A Kovacs operate their company that transcend the world of fiction-writing and could be beneficial to other marketers in search of such devoted customers.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

3 Questions to Ask Your Consultants

Consultants often get a bad rap. Some offer true value, experience, and expertise, while others charge you to provide feedback that you could have obtained yourself with some diligence and effort within your own organization. A friend of mine refers to that as "borrowing your watch to tell you what time it is." I've also seen output of some consulting organizations that amounts to little more than a wish list of the few people that could be spared from the team to talk to the consultants. So how do you avoid receiving this kind of output? Here are a few questions that can guide your discussions in the right direction.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

5 Tips To Be A Smoother Speaker

At some point in your career, there's a chance you will be called upon to speak to a group. Whether the audience consists of fifteen coworkers or a group of three thousand, you want to appear professional and smooth when you speak. Beyond that, even after you have had some good experience, speaking as a skill can always be improved. Here are a few tips on how you can do exactly that.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Rewind: My Top Ten Blog Posts

Last week I hit 125 posts on the blog, which made it halfway to my original concept goal of 250 posts (about 5 a week for a year with a few days off). As an additional retrospective today, I thought I'd share the top ten most popular posts out of that first 125 in case you missed any of them. So, in no particular order, here are the ten most read posts on this site so far

Monday, September 21, 2015

Hey Millennials, what are you doing with your money?

I've written before on personal finance and investing, and why you should have money invested as early as possible. Here's something you should read if you haven't on seeking employer matches and here's something else on timing of those investments. Yet despite all of this wisdom (and charts! I created charts!), I read over the weekend that only 26% of millennials invest. So almost three-fourths of our young people are not investing. (Here's the full article if you are interested). Three-fourths!

I know my blog posts won't change behavior overnight, but people are missing out in a huge way.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Blogger's Toolkit: Prepopulated Tweets

So, partially because I like building things and partially since I am always in need of something to make my own life easier, I built this. What is it? It's a form that lets you auto-generate your own "Tweet This" links with pre-populated Tweets. I may get a little fancier with it over time, but for now, it does exactly what it is asked. You put what you want that prepopulated Tweet to be in the first box, and you can generate code and a test link that you can use for you blog or wherever else you have HTML in need of prepopulated Tweets. Enjoy!


Create your own "Tweet This" message
140
Don't forget to include your Twitter @username and a link to your content!

Code:
Test the Link:

If you like this tool, please bookmark the page and come back. And feel free to share with your friends using (you guessed it) this handy prepopulated tweet.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Halfway Point: 25 Things Writing 125 Blog Posts Has Taught Me

If you have been reading the blog for a while, you know that the plan has been for me to attempt 250 blog posts, posting relatively close to daily. The idea initially was that it would roughly equate to a year's worth of posts, and give a huge backlog of writing material from which to draw to develop additional enhanced material. As this post marks the halfway point of 125 posts, I thought I would do a halfway retrospective list of things I have learned along this journey so far.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Did You Earn That Media?

Did you earn that media? Do you even know what I am talking about?

The term "earned media" describes press about a company, product, or service as a result of actual newsworthiness. A company that donates half of its profits to the homeless or a new building complex being built to support a headquarters relocation. Earned media does not always have to require some sort of charitable offering, but rather that a company or person did something that the general public may want to know. Earned media plays an important role in a marketing strategy for a few reasons

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action

This past weekend, I found myself at Chuy's (great food if you've never been there) eating an order of Elvis Green Chile Fried Chicken. For the uninitiated, this is a chicken breast breaded in Lay's potato chips and fried, then slathered in a green chile paste that at times burns your tongue. Sounds good, eh? But this post really isn't about dinner. After dinner, when walking to the car, I heard the speakers playing to those waiting in line with a little classic Elvis singing "A little less conversation, a little more action please." It got me thinking about work and how often we get wrapped up in conversation and continued analysis rather than action. We even have phrases for it. Whether you call it "Analysis Paralysis" or "Talking about work instead of doing work" the result is the same: endless conversations discussing work but without any real output. Have you found yourself in this trap?

Monday, September 14, 2015

Managing Larger To Do Lists

So if you have stopped by the blog, you may have already stumbled across my productivity challenge, where I show you how to work up to a consistent and planned five items a day to knock off of your backlog. But what happens if you need to get more done than just five items? Here's a couple of tricks to still get you by.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Remembering

Fourteen years ago, life in the United States changed in a way that may ripple through the rest of our lives. Take some time today to think about those that lost everything that day.

Photo of the World Trade Center Memorial by Ronile 

Thursday, September 10, 2015

What The Heck is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing World 2015 kicked off this week. It's a huge conference around the concept of content marketing and how to optimize it, improve its quality, and improve the results from it. If you want to keep up with live updates from the conference, I recommend you check out the Twitter hashtag for the event, #CMWorld. I have to admit I was a little disappointed to find out that #CMWorld did not mean "Cameron Mathews' World" where my legions of fans were tweeting about me. But all ego bruises aside, if you are like me in that you are not currently in Cleveland, Ohio, you might be wondering what content marketing even means.

Have no fear, I will explain it as best I can.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Evolution of a Brand

If you do not have your home page set to Google search like I do, you might have missed that Google changed their logo yesterday. It isn't the first update to Google's logo since their inception, but it does represent an evolution in the company. If you want to read the official Google news about it, they have it all here on this blog post.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

A Quick Note On Perspective

The problem with big picture people is that they often have trouble understanding how the details conflict with their desires and finding ways around that.

The problem with hyper-detail-oriented people is they have difficulty lifting their heads up to see the broader scope of the problem. The adage "can't see the forest for the trees" comes to mind.

Monday, August 31, 2015

3 Tips on Leading Alongside Peers

Leadership comes with difficulties, no matter the relationship of the leader to those they lead. Managers can exert some direct influence from a chain-of-command and disciplinary perspective, but ultimately that only holds so far. When trying to influence peers without a direct manager-subordinate relationship, though, the challenges may appear insurmountable. Still, people successfully lead alongside others every day. So how can you effectively lead others with whom you don't have a direct relationship?

Friday, August 28, 2015

What Type of Product Do You Sell? [Infographic]


How are you marketing your products to differentiate them against your competitors? Most products fall somewhere on a spectrum between novelty and innovation, customer experience, and price. Markets certainly exist to compete at any level between these factors. For example, "me too" products second to the market have to rely on price and experience to differentiate them from the original. Products charging a premium price may justify that with higher quality and customer experience. Where do your products fall on this spectrum?

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Why Good Work Is Never Waste

Once upon a time, I worked on a project with one of my team members that ended up a flop. We've all had failures (unless you haven't worked long enough), but sometimes they feel colossal, even if the failure was not our fault. This particular project went through multiple iterations and a good chunk of IT's development dollars before we cancelled it due to inability to match the functionality with what the users were seeking.

A few years later, I had a heavy role in the implementation of a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. It was a top industry pick, and one that we felt was going to revolutionize our sales process and methodology. A few months before implementation (but almost one year after we had started), some executives pulled the plug on it.

Both of these projects could be chalked up as complete time wasted. Teams spent countless hours working on projects that never saw the light of day. But neither of these were wasted.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

6 Aids For Finding Your Way In A New Job

When you are new on a job, sometimes you may feel lost. The first few days often don't have the amount of direction required to perform at your peak right out of the gate. Fortunately, you can find your way easier than following a treasure map with a few lists and a few actions.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Winning the Weekend

By now, I am sure you are familiar with my productivity challenge, but I wanted to throw in a few more examples on how you can leverage the concepts to your advantage, even when it seems difficult. One way you can bump it up a notch is by making a game out of your productivity.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Level Up!

I'm writing this Sunday night, but Monday, our family is going through something pretty cool: my oldest starts Kindergarten Monday morning. It's certainly a nostalgic event, and a change across the family. We will have multiple stops dropping off and picking up from school, we will be waking up earlier, and we'll be adjusting to all sorts of new things which we are not even yet aware of.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

You Had One Job

"You had one job." Every time someone makes a mistake in their perceived "job," this phrase gets uttered by someone looking to ridicule their sheer incompetence. The phrase has become an internet meme, has an entire website devoted to it, and probably more than one Twitter handle (but here's one).

Other than its reported first usage in the movie Ocean's 11, I think the first and most frequent time I hear the phrase follows a missed field goal in a football game. The idea that the kicker has one job (to kick the ball between the uprights) that he (or she, perhaps) practices day in and day out and still lacks perfection in execution is pure fodder for the hecklers. But have you ever tried to kick a field goal? It's not particularly easy.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

3 Traits of Good Managers

What makes a good manager? There are several articles about what not to do as a manager (note to self: write a "bad manager" article in the next couple of weeks), but sometimes positive vibes are just more pleasant to read and to write. So, here's my opinion on a few traits that make someone a great manager.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

What Is Your Dream Job?

I made this beer. No, really.
If you won the lottery and did not have to work, what would you do? If you're like me, the first thing you would do is likely take a vacation, but after some point, I would need to work at something. For me. that would most likely be running a brewery. I've even started running the numbers to see how much money I would need to start a brewery as a hobby. The answer to that math question is more than I currently have sitting around as play money, but it is not completely out of the realm of possibility someday. In the meantime, though, I can make moves in that direction by continuing to brew at home and learning as much as I can about the commercial process and equipment.

Monday, August 17, 2015

How Long Are Your Meetings?

Happy Monday! If you haven't yet filled out my quick three minute survey from Friday, click here and go do that. I really appreciate it and it helps me select topics for the blog and get feedback on how I'm doing and where to focus.

So, to the question of the day.

How long are your meetings? And how long should they be?

Everyone that ever talks about meetings agrees on one point: people hate them, yet they cannot escape them. Given our destiny seems to indicate that we will, for the foreseeable future, continue participating in and scheduling meetings, what's the best way for us to do that?

Friday, August 14, 2015

Casual Friday Fun Survey!

It's Friday, and I am cruising quickly towards 125 blog posts, which would mark the halfway point in this initial jump started journey, so I thought it was time to take a quick pulse check and see how I'm doing and what I could do better. It's ten simple questions. Answer as many as you like and I truly appreciate it!

Create your own user feedback survey
If you can't see the survey, click here.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Why and When You Need To Bounce

If you have aspirations to get promoted and move up the corporate ladder, chances are that you have, at some point, had the vision that it is as easy as climbing that ladder, or perhaps a flight of stairs. After you work for while, though, you realize that the staircase narrows as it goes up the pyramid. At the base of it, the mathematics just make it more and more difficult to climb by moving straight up. Sure, not everyone has aspirations for moving up the managerial chain, but even if there are two others on your team that want to move in the same direction you do, when your manager gets promoted, quits, or passes away (heaven forbid), there are at least three equally qualified people angling for the same job, not to mention those from the outside. If you are exceptionally talented, a direct vertical move may be in your future, but a horizontal bounce (either between departments or companies) may create an easier and better path for you.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

What's The Matter With Kids Today?

Thanks to a couple of my coworkers, I was able to participate in leading a class during the take-your-child-to-work day at our office yesterday. We worked with over 90 kids to walk them through an exercise to help them understand what we do at work and how that operates to improve the business.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

The Importance of the Unimportance of Analytics

It is incredibly easy to be sucked into data and analytics. It is fascinating how much information exists, and how readily you can get your hands on it. Whether you have Google Analytics on your blog or you are using Twitter or Facebook analytics as well, information about the performance of your website and your readers is constantly being collected and stored for you to continually pore over, wondering why that last post didn't just take off like the H1N1 virus. My recommendation on that front? Stop. Stop looking and obsessing over the data. Instead, develop a methodology for utilizing the data that keeps you from obsessing over every lost Twitter follower.

Monday, August 10, 2015

The Last Leap in the Productivity Challenge - Are you Ready?

Here's the last jump for you in my ongoing productivity challenge on how to get more done: bump yourself up to five items a day on your list. Wow, this is groundbreaking. I know you are thinking to yourself that you can't believe the concept of just doing more. Well, there's a little more to it than just bumping up to five items a day. So keep reading, unless you think you have it figured out, and I will explain exactly which five items make your list today (and every other day from here on). There may be something in it for you in the end as well if you keep on reading.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Your Moment of Zen

So, if you are strictly keeping count at home, today is the day that would be the next step in the productivity path to getting a ton of things done. I hope you have made it and are ready. But I am going to postpone that post until Monday.

Last night I watched Jon Stewart's final episode of The Daily Show. I remember when he started on the show thinking that he could never rival what Craig Kilborn did with the show (spoiler alert: I was definitely surprised to see Kilborn cameo on the finale).

Thursday, August 6, 2015

How Not To Be a Needy Boss

So, a couple of weeks ago I had a post about how not to be needy as an employee (you can read it here). If you don't have five minutes to read it, I'll give you the synopsis: try it yourself first, rather than running to the manager to ask direction on every single thing before you take a stab at it yourself.

So what about if you're the boss? Bosses can be quite needy, too. And, if you haven't gotten the gist of my overall philosophy here, people need to be able to work independently. That includes management. So here are some tips on how not to be a needy boss.