Last weekend, I found myself shirtless with swim trunks along with 126 other people in a variety of swim attire on the side of a pool. A number written with a black sharpie on my right arm. It was 6:45 in the morning and I was about to swim 450…
Trickle Change
Last Friday, as I was waiving goodbye to the family to head to work, I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. No lights, no beeping sounds, nothing. After riding my bike all week, an open door drained the battery dead. So I hopped on my bike again and hoped…
Respect The Rough
When playing a dog-leg hole in golf (one that bends to the left or right), it’s pretty easy to believe that shooting over the trees and taking the shortest path to the hole will result in us winning. We tell ourselves, even if we end up short in the rough…
The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same
A close friend recently told me about his final motorcycle ride. Back when he was in college, he rode his 150cc bike to school each day without a helmet or gloves or really any protective gear. His mom worried for his safety and after hounding him to get a helmet, she…
The Way We’ve Always Done It
Ever watch a child learn how to walk, or really learn how to do almost anything? It takes days and days of repetitive attempts. Each day mostly consisting of failure but slowly they show progress. More attempts and soon they’re walking, then running, then jumping, then dancing. We don’t learn…
Leading Under Uncertainty
At a previous company, we brought in an external CEO to help us raise our second round of financing. He came in guns blazing and as the months passed claimed to have found a number of investors interested in our company. He took several fairly expensive trips oversees all in…
Teamwork Means Not Getting Your Way
When I started working for Tuscany (a software startup), I was given a task by one of the other engineers. After a few weeks, I had completed the code and sent the code for review to the more senior engineer. He looked at it and said, “Well, that’s not the…
Communication Tug Of War
Is it ever okay to lie to a customer? We’ve all seen it happen. It seems easier to simply commit to the impossible and then slip the schedule later than to say no now and take the hit. Sometimes the customer demands to be lied to. How often have we…
The Adult Version Of Chicken
We’re all familiar with the rather silly adolescent game of chicken — A group of people stand in the middle of on-coming traffic and the last one to jump out of the way “wins”. Or in another version, two kids drive cars toward one another and the one that swerves…
The Risks and Rewards of Coaching
Anyone who has had a good coach recognizes their value. From outside the relationship, it can be hard to see why. Our coaches usually don’t look like they could do what they are asking us to do, usually they can’t. Their skill set differs from our skill set — we…