Strategy: Mission Statements

As much as we want to be everything to everyone; life and business just do not work that way.  Companies that succeed know they need to hone their focus on their vision.  They translate this vision into a powerful mission statement.  They realize that  mission statements are more than pithy phrases or something to fill [...]

What’s Your Number?

Most of the times, start ups are heads down, focused on what they need to do to keep afloat and make it to that next milestone.  Every so often its good to come up for air and take stock of how you are doing compared to your competition, and your industry in general.  One way [...]

Musings on a Color – Shades of Grey

Monday, 21 December 2009, 13:12 | Category : competition, corporate culture
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When I say shades of grey, I’m focused on employee experience and expertise; often acquired after years of work, hence the shades of grey.  I first came to the Bay Area right at the height of the dot com boom and stayed to experience most of the bust.  One thing that struck me, at the [...]

Up and Down the Ladder of Management

Many managers I’ve worked with reside at either end of the spectrum: They are either hands-off or the micromanager.  The best managers I know understand that they cannot be locked into a single position, and rather move up and down the scale as the situation requires.  They know for example, that when a team is [...]

What are you going to do in the next down turn?

Economic signals are telling us that the worse is over and we are pulling out of the recession.  Before we forget the pain, I’m curious if there was any lessons learned that we’ll take with us as the economy starts to prosper?
Make those critical connections – Get to know the people now that can help [...]

Companies on the Rebound – Planning for Success

Saturday, 22 August 2009, 15:22 | Category : competition, decision making, employees, execution, infrastructure, opportunity, success
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With the economy starting to grow once again, companies that want to position themselves for success need to have an edge on the competition.  To do so, they need be plan for growth.
Some ideas to consider:
Invest in New Technology – Have the new technology in place to streamline process and add customers with little incremental [...]

Nature’s Top 10 List

From the July 2009 issue of FastCompany Magazine came Adam Werbach’s list of Nature’s 10 Simple Rules for Business.  I thought they were worth repeating.
From the emerging fields of biomechanics and biomimicry, scientists are decoding rules that businesses can apply so they become as hardy and long lasting as a forest.  Nature, after all, has [...]

Unintended Consequences – SF loses money from parking tickets by cutting back on services

From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle – Street-Sweeper Reduction Costing Muni Money
When city officials cut street sweeping in more than 20 neighborhoods in August to save cash, they knew that the change would lead to a loss in revenue from parking tickets.
They probably didn’t anticipate that the city would lose four times more [...]

Lessons from Chile

Wire: BLOOMBERG News (BN) Date: 2009-04-23 04:01:00
Harvard’s Peso Doctor Vindicated as Chile Currency Evades Slump
By Sebastian Boyd

April 23 (Bloomberg) — Thousands of government workers marched on downtown Santiago last November, burning an effigy of Chilean Finance Minister Andres Velasco and calling him “disgusting” as a strike for higher wages paralyzed public services.  Five months later, polls show that Velasco [...]

Public Companies in Silicon Valley are on the decline

A news article recently spoke of the number of public companies have been on the decline in recent years, and certainly before the current financial situation.  One obvious reason might be Sarbanes-Oxley.  How does this impact VC business in the Valley?  Opinions are mixed, but since a lot of VCs invest for that “pop” at [...]

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