6 step process in decision making

Pleasant also recommends a poignant question for self-reflection: What can I do to take care of myself that doesn’t require anyone to do or be anything different? “This question shifts our perspective from looking to our external environment to take care of us to tapping into our own personal knowledge and power to make the best decisions based on what works for them.” Examining our own answer to this question creates space for us to see the resources and options that are available to us. This helps us to focus on healing and moving forward rather than staying stuck in the negativity and endless news cycle.  … [Read more...] about 4 steps companies should take in the aftermath of January 6

For the sake of my compliance and legal team, I’ll note: I’m not talking about laws or federal, state, or local election rules. Those laws and rules are not to be broken. They’re there for a reason, and if you want to be elected to make laws, it’s generally a good idea not to break them. And a disclaimer to that disclaimer: I am, of course, not including acts of protest or civil disobedience here. Some of America’s most important changes have been a result of people’s staging sit- ins or protests, thanks to civil rights or environmental protestors literally putting their well- being on the line to impact change. As the late, great Georgia Representative John Lewis, a man who’d been arrested for protesting dozens of times, often noted, there is such a thing as good trouble. … [Read more...] about For women in leadership, breaking unwritten rules is part of the process

Last, to measure progress against this mission, and to know if customers are being served by the team’s existence, they need measures of success. Many companies would consider these objectives, as in a Management By Objectives (MBO) system or an Objectives and Key Results (OKR) system. Call it what you will, but I believe these should be relatively long-lived measurements that tell the story of progress toward the stated mission, versus objectives that change quarterly. For example, when our Infrastructure got started, our build system, which packages our code for deployment to servers, was horribly broken. It could take half a day to build and deploy our software, and half of the time the build would fail for unknown reasons. It was killing developer productivity. So the Infrastructure team took on a measure of “time from code check-in to deployment.” In the short term, it was clear they had some cleanup to do, but over the long term, this is a clear measure of … [Read more...] about The “dozen-bagel” secret to preserving startup spirit as your company grows

When the test results came in, the next stage of my life was set in motion. The doctor told me that the level of stress I’d experienced for such an extended period of time was so extreme that it had physically damaged the tissues in my body. The sustained level of the stress hormone cortisol I had for such an extended period of time meant that my organs, muscles, etc. were severely weakening. … [Read more...] about Burnout put me in the hospital. This is what I learned about healthy work-life balance

Proven playbooks aren’t working as well. Strategies and tactics we’ve relied on in the past aren’t delivering the expected results. Trusted lieutenants are struggling to perform at their best. Top performers—people I know are up to challenge—begin to get frustrated or underperform. Like clockwork, once I connect the dots on the two points above, in the next business review I’ll see that numbers are starting to slip. So what do you do? Here are the steps I follow, along with tactical examples from our most recent growth spurt when we launched our home-delivery program. … [Read more...] about My company has gone through 3 growth cycles in 18 months. Here’s how I navigated them