“It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, we’re all in the people business” I remember these words vividly, spoken to me by my uncle Morris as he escorted me to the elevator of his Park Avenue office building. I was
Valuing Strength Over Lack of Weakness
Finding and hiring an executive is one of the hard things addressed in Ben Horowitz’s book – The Hard Thing about Hard Things. As an intro to the topic, Horowitz calls out many of the complexities and challenges associated with
Communication Lessons from France (And A Non-French Speaker)
It is a uniquely humbling experience not being able to communicate with anyone around you. Even the most trivial transactions become anxiety-producing challenges – for instance, asking for directions, paying a toll, or refueling your car at a gas station.
Baking Bread and Achieving Objective Distance From Your Work
Let me start by saying that I am a lousy baker. Well, I suppose it goes broader than that – I’m really a lousy cook in general. I have no intuition for food preparation at all and the only way
The Key to Smart Failure: Believing You’re In Control
Last week I wrote about three seemingly unrelated experiences that coalesced to teach a common lesson. This week, I’d like to take the same approach on the topic of smart failure. 1) Seth Godin Recently at AppNexus’ New York office,
Crucial Conversations
This past week I read Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Immediately after I finished reading, I did something that I’ve never done before: I flipped the book over and started reading it again.
Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. For those of you who haven’t read the book, it’s essentially a collection of vignettes about different people who’ve had to make hard decisions accompanied
The Power of Team Camaraderie and Finding the Right Opponent
This weekend I spent a good bit of time watching Friday Night Lights, the television series about high school football in rural Texas. The show is packed with life lessons and inspiring stories, but the thing that I enjoy the
The Need to Prove Myself
It’s become somewhat popular lately to list self-awareness as a key driver of career success (as seen in this NY Times article titled Secret Ingredient for Success). I’ve always thought that self-examination was a little bit of a funny trick
The Importance of Self-Promotion, A Lesson from the New York City Subway
About once a week, I find myself on a subway car that is plastered full of advertisements for the New York City Subway. When I first saw these self-promotional advertisements last year, I couldn’t help but chuckle. What a waste