Organizational Groundhog Day: Why we see the same ‘mistakes’ across our careers
If you’ve been working a while, you’ve probably had more than one corporate déjà vu moment. Maybe it’s a group dynamic gone sideways or a CEO’s self-inflicted wound. They leave you head-scratching about why, despite all the MBAs and consultants (guilty of being both!), we keep ending up in the same pickles. This year I…
The Index Card Summary of “Think Bigger: How to Innovate”
As a former innovation consultant, who designed initiatives, competitions, and recommended approaches for diverse clients, I was intrigued to hear that decision science scholar Sheena Iyengar, famous for her “jam study”, was now teaching, writing, and advising on innovation. I, of course, wanted to compare notes. Iyengar asserts that there are no new ideas, only…
How bad is it? A methodology for managing mistakes
The cost of perfection is infinite. So how do you right-size your efforts when you have a high quality bar but limited resources? We’ve all had the impulse to work on something for just a little bit longer. Perhaps late at night or after some rapid edits, you have the nagging pull to check your…
Is empathy scaleable? A question for large anything, from orgs to LLMs
I stand as a manager where smart colleagues in a slowing industry want to know how they can do well while doing good, amidst the techlash. I am also a few degrees of separation from many important decision-makers in the tech industry. From my Stanford class (2007), that’s not hard to do — an Instagram founder and the Open AI CEO…
The Index Card Summary of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is Patrick Lencioni’s New York Times Best Seller for a reason: any team member can see themselves in this list of foibles. Each of the five dysfunctions require leadership interventions to solve. Below is a brief summary of what that entails. The Index Card Summary 1. Building trust What.…
Harvard trained beggar takeaways
The “Harvard trained beggar” snapshot has made the social media rounds, and I had so many reactions. My first thought was: brilliant execution of a social experiment. He earned his pocket change that day. Then my second order thinking kicked in with three more layers: 1. That totally worked! Why? This clever beggar is heightening…
What it really means to be responsible for your own career
Guest post by James Wallace of extroverteddeveloper.com You are responsible for your own career. We’ve probably all heard that phrase before. You may have even seen some advice about what it means. I’ve found that most of that advice revolves around networking and visibility or self-advocacy. Instead, today I’m going to write about what this…
Top five small apartment survival tools
It’s no small feat to live your best life in a big city and a small apartment. Below are a few tools for your urban jungle survival kit, indoor edition. 1. Swap your TV for AR glasses I was so glad my husband did not subject me to She Hulk this fall. Instead, he lay…
Definitely walk before you crawl
I think it’s totally fine that my 8 month-old wants to walk, even though he can barely crawl. As a Millennial, I too expect a promotion every six months.
Has the metaverse missed its moment? Three recent misses explored
If you were looking at “metaverse” mentions alone in 2022 earnings calls, you might be fooled into thinking massive adoption is underway, a-la Facebook in 2007. Mentions of “metaverse” in earnings calls (Q1 2016-Q1 2022) And in the last three years, three concurrent forces emerged that could have catapulted the metaverse into the next ubiquitous…
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MBA in the City 