Who hacked the Easy Button? This has been a common refrain around my company for the past decade. For those who are unfamiliar with the Easy Button, beginning in 2005 Staples, the office supply company, featured the button in its advertising campaigns. The concept: Got a challenge or a need? Press the Easy Button and presto, it’s… Read more »
How does an engineer become a business leader? More importantly, how do we enable today’s technologists to become tomorrow’s leaders? Engineering, at its core, is just using the context of technology to solve business challenges. It’s a craft that can’t be perfected and requires practitioners to continually educate, and reeducate, themselves to find the newest… Read more »
From my longstanding journey of working in large teams and cross-functional teams, I have personally experienced that the single biggest factor in ensuring peak performance of self and others is TRUST. I have also learned that even before trust, one needs to inculcate an important skill: being vulnerable. There is always a risk and fear… Read more »
One fateful day back in the fall of 2018, my husband David returned home from a busy day of teaching several back-to-back hot yoga classes at a popular studio in Anchorage and told me he wanted to start teaching yoga to men in prison. He confessed to me that while his classes were consistently filled… Read more »
It is human nature to envision the future as a modified slice of the recent past. Thus, we expect the contours of the path ahead to look somewhat different but remain largely familiar and therefore comfortable. The last 50 years of relative stability have reinforced this myopic and narrow aspect of human expectations, rendering us ill… Read more »
As I sat here thinking about what to write, something a wise man once said to me came into my mind: “You can’t make progress until you’re brutally honest about where you’re starting from.” That wise man was my previous boss, who then became my dear friend and mentor. He was killed in a water… Read more »
“It’s good enough for government work.” You might have heard the expression, or even uttered these words yourself. The meaning is simple: low standards, mediocre work, and one shouldn’t have higher expectations. However, when heard by a long-time government manager like me, these words can sting. As someone who is proud of my government career,… Read more »
In the past year, I prepared and delivered remarks for the memorial services of two very dear friends. Not just dinner companions, traveling buddies or co-workers—though they were all of those things. These were truly dear friends, people who formed part of my foundation and whom I knew I could call anytime for perspective and… Read more »
I cannot imagine a more complex time to lead a business. I have been saying this for many years now. Yet, somehow, each new year manages to deliver the previously unthinkable along with escalating levels of complexity with which to contend. What’s more, this trend toward the increasingly complex shows no sign of abating. How do… Read more »