BI
Last week I sat down with interviewers Doug Henschen, Vala Afshar, and a bit of Ray Wang (live from a 777 taxiing en route to Tokyo) to participate in Episode 100 of DisrupTV along with fellow guests DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth and big data / science recruiter Virginia Backaitis. We covered
Leadership
In an effort to promote my upcoming presentation at SaaStr 2018, which is currently on the agenda for Wednesday, February 7th at 9:00 AM in Studio C, I thought I'd do a quick post sharing what I'll be covering in the presentation, officially titled, "
Career
As executives there are certain things we are expected to know -- in our heads -- about our jobs and our functions. Sometimes I call this "the 3:00 AM test" because someone should be able to wake you up at 3:00 AM in the middle of
Decision Making
In every executive team there are going to be times when people don't agree on certain important strategic or operational decisions. Some examples: * Should we split SDRs inbound vs outbound? * Should we map SCs to reps or pool them? * How should we split upsell vs new business focus
Career
Most managers, save for true sycophants, want to challenge their boss. Few managers want to be puppet yes-people to the boss. They've worked hard to get where they are. They bring years of wisdom and experience. They want to push and challenge. But many don't know
AR
How would you like our company to win deals even when you tie or lose the product evaluation? Halo effects do precisely that. This post discusses what halo effects are and how to use them to your advantage.
Entrepreneurship
It was early in my career, maybe 8 years in, and I was director of product marketing at a startup. One day, my peer, the directof of marketing programs hit me with this in an ops review meeting: You want to be judged on intentions, not results. I recall being
Culture
I went looking for a post to help someone decide if they should move into management, but couldn't find one that I really loved. These three posts aren't bad. Nor is this HBR article. But since I couldn't find a post that I thought
Leadership
I read this New York Times editorial this morning, How the Truth Got Hacked, and it reminded me of a situation at work, back when I first joined Host Analytics some four years ago. This line, in particular, caught my attention: Imagine the conversation we’d be having if we
Leadership
It was back in the 1990s, at Versant, when my old (and dearly departed) friend Larry Pulkownik first introduced me to the phrase: Win Them Alone, Lose Them Together And its corollary: Ask for Help at the First Sign of Trouble Larry told me this rule from the sales perspective:
Leadership
I was speaking to my executive coach the other day and we had a great conversation about feedback. I'm going to adapt what she said into some pithy advice for managers on how to give feedback. Here are the three golden rules of feedback: * It has to be
Leadership
I always cringe when I hear a young parent say something like, “Hey Buddy, don’t forget your toy shovel.” I feel the same way when I hear managers call subordinates “buddy” or when I see managers who are, in general, too preoccupied with being liked. One day I wish