Today is my 60th Day with my new employer. My team asked me recently, “Why do you keep count like this?” I tell them that it’s to preserve momentum — forward movement. Coming into a new organization, with challenges and things to address, you only have so much time to effect change. You have to…
November 11, 2022 Periodically, post-pandemic (is it?), colleagues and former colleagues have reached out with some interesting career opportunities. Some have been local, and some have been back in the Pacific Northwest — place means less and less these days as I’m remote or hybrid from almost all of my clients, and we seem to…
Wisdom can be found most anywhere, if you just look. Particularly so if you’re like me, and revel in the unexpected linkages between all sorts of things. Not long ago I was doing some research on an area nonprofit, which meant learning as much as possible about their leadership. Which in turn led me to…
April 21, 2022 “Scott Zarrow had a library.” So began Rabbi Marc Fitzerman’s eulogy of Scott Zarrow, a former client and philanthropist who became a friend, whom I think about often. Scott called me up one day after he finished an add-on to his house that was equal to or bigger than the original footprint…
It’s no surprise to say that for most of their 30-year existence, IT departments have not been held in high regard. Organizations grow over time based on perceived need. Every startup or small business I’ve ever known added a bookkeeper of some kind in short order, then grew over time to require more than accounting.…
Yesterday I attended a remembrance service for William Fosterr, whom I got to know and appreciate during my days as the sole IT contractor (2004 — 2011) for the Mental Health Association of Tulsa, now known statewide as MHAOK. I got to know William initially as one of the Front Desk people at their old…
In Asian cultures, there is a traditional event that takes place on a child’s one-year birthday that portends the child’s life choices going forward. Called Zhua Zhou in China, it’s literally “first birthday pick” or The Grabbing Game, where parents lay out a collection of items on a mat, and whichever item the child picks…
December 10, 2021 I often include links in these posts, which add detail to whatever point I’m making from other people. But this time, I have to go all Fanboy on how much I love Claire Hughes Johnson, COO of Stripe since 2014. I’ve read Claire’s observations for a while on Twitter and various online…
This last weekend marked my Meyer Lemon’s annual trip into the house for Winter. Since lemons require a long growing season, I always bring it in just before Thanksgiving laden with lemons while silently praying that none fall off while being GENTLY coaxed through the door, where it will stay until February. Then it’ll go…
Remember the Tracy Kidder book, “The Soul of the New Machine“? Required reading in business school from almost the day it shipped, the author embedded with teams at Data General in Massachusetts, in their quest to build a new and better mini-computer (remember those?) in those in-between days between big iron mainframes and the eventual…