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
IPO
I was talking with my friend Tracy Eiler, author of Aligned to Achieve, the other day and she showed me a chart that they were using at InsideView to segment customers. The chart was a quadrant that mapped customers on two dimensions: renewal rate and retention rate. The idea was
Management
I'm not going to talk about columnar databases, compression, horizontal partitioning, SAP Hana, or real-time vs. pre-aggregated summarization in this post on in-memory analytics. I'm going to talk about the other kind of in-memory analytics. The kind that can make or break your career. What do
Management
[Editor's note: revised 3/27/17 with changes to some definitions.] It’s been nearly three years since my original post on calculating SaaS renewal rates and I’ve learned a lot and seen a lot of new situations since then. In this post, I’ll provide a
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:
Management
"Well, he's never been a sales development rep (SDR) manager before, but he has been an SDR for 3 years at another company. The chance to be a manager is why he'd come here." -- Famous Last Words I can't tell you
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
Management
I think great learning can come from studying what cost your predecessor his/her job (on the assumption they weren't promoted out of it onto greener pastures). While such matters are invariably complex ("oh, there were a lot of factors, boss relationship, objectives attainment, sales confidence, ..."
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
HR
The first time I heard the VC adage "you can never fire someone too early," it rubbed me the wrong way. It sounded harsh and unfeeling. It seemed flippant. It felt trite. It seemed, frankly, like one of those things people say in the press box, but never
Leadership
Say you're an experienced executive joining a new company. When you start, you inherit a team of people. The first thing you must realize is that over time, "the team" will silently transform into "your team." Warts and all, you're going to