Rehearsal
Rehearsal is key to making a successful presentation. If you can do at least two rehearsals of an important presentation it will pay huge dividends.
Rules of Thumb
Tony Schwartz’s Principles For Fiercely Complex Times
Tony Schwartz offers “Ten Principles For Living in Fiercely Complex Times” that you can “rely on to make choices that reflect openness, integrity and authenticity.” Here are the top three for me: “Emotions are contagious, so it pays to know what you’re feeling.” Tony Schwartz One of the balancing acts of entrepreneurship is control vs.
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What Situation Is Your Team Training For?
What situation is your team training for: the key to effective and rapid execution is appropriate shared rehearsal and training.
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Focus Needs Buffers and Free Time
This is my first day off in about three weeks. A client has been preparing a proposal and presentation for a significant opportunity that they have been invited to compete for and between that and existing obligations it’s been hectic. It’s more clear than ever that focus needs buffers: letting administrative tasks pile up too
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Price, Value, and Your Prospect’s Perception of Risk
Here are a couple of rules of thumb you may find helpful in thinking about price, value, and your prospect’s perception of risk.
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We Use a Wiki to Organize Customer Interviews
Tips for using a wiki to organize customer interviews for customer discovery and to assess perspectives on their offering after purchase.
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Tom Van Vleck’s “3 Questions” Complement Root Cause Analysis
Tom Van Vleck has a great collection of software engineering stories on his site. One particularly good article is “Three Questions For Each Bug That You Find” which offers the following key observation: The key idea behind these questions is that every bug is a symptom of an underlying process. You have to treat the
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Making the Trains Run on Time: Software Release
I recently took part in a small reunion of folks who worked on the “router software release” team at Cisco in the early years and I took it as an opportunity to jot down some rules of thumb I learned, mostly the hard way, about managing software releases. There is always a strong reason to
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Managing Email Conversations With Customers
A guest post by Edith Harbaugh that offers a number of practical tips and suggestions for managing email conversations with customers.
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Evaluating and Reacting to New Competitors
What’s your reaction when a previously unknown competitor pops out on the market? Perhaps they are better funded or staffed with famous entrepreneurs or they announce one or more significant customer deals. If your prospects are not bringing them up I would continue with Plan A. If you have selected an important problem to solve
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Zero Sum vs. Quid Pro Quo
The essence of entrepreneurship is a free exchange of value–what the Romans called “quid pro quo”–that leaves all parties better off: no one loses.
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Uncertain Times 2
I mentioned in “Uncertain Times” that we are in the midst of economic and technology transitions that have vastly increased the turbulence of our environment. I have found two rules of thumb useful guides: “It may looks like a crisis but it’s only the end of an illusion.” Gerald Weinberg in Secrets of Consulting “Innovation
To See Ourselves As Others See Us
To See Ourselves As Others See Us And would some Power the small gift give us To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us, Robert Burns “To a Louse“ It can be very difficult to understand how we appear to others. When I was rehearsing the “2011 New
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Drifting 2
Jeroen Bakker sent in a great list of suggestions as a follow up to last week’s “Drifting” post.
Applying Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design To Startups
David L. Akin is the Director, SpaceSystems Laboratory at the University of Maryland. He is also the author of “Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design.” He lists more than 40 laws, here are ten that I thought were directly applicable to software entrepreneurship, but the whole list is very funny and worth reading.
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Always
“Always trust your client—and cut the cards.” Weinberg’s Sixth Rule of Trust Always be collecting data. Always be collecting multiple perspectives. “Always Be Collecting Data” The rule of ABCD “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data” attributed to W. Edwards Deming Possibly a riff on “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” In
Drifting
It’s useful to think very deeply about a situation but beyond a certain level of effort or length of time you need to do some drifting and recharge. I think you need a mental circuit breaker for detecting an impasse and triggering activities that can lead to a change in perspective.
Virtual and On-Line Are As Superfluous As Horseless and Electric
I think “virtual team” is rapidly becoming redundant: just as “horseless carriage” became car I think “virtual team” will become just team. Most project teams will have a virtual component (e.g. on-line workspace, chat histories) and geographically remote members, if only to involve suppliers, partners, and customers more seamlessly. More broadly I think that virtual
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Customer Development Requires a Willingness to Be Surprised
Customer Development Requires a Willingness to Be Surprised And by “surprised” I mean: able to admit that your assumptions are wrong open to new insights from prospects willing to change your plans for your product or your startup willing begin again with a better frame of reference Inspired by Bob Lewis’ “Holiday Card to the
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Quick Thoughts on Selling For Software Engineers
Some quick thoughts on selling for software engineers. Sell results, not method. Land and Expand. Get clarity on the customer’s view of the problem. Listen.
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