Archive for the 'Analysis and Opinion' Category

Startup Burnout – and What You Can Do About It

Posted on September 18th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Startups

Guest post by Toby Ruckert (Twitter / LinkedIn) When I was 29 years old, I thought I had successfully ticked many boxes of things I wanted to achieve in life. I married the love of my life, became an accomplished pianist, had built and helped others to build several companies and realized my dream of living on an island in a house next to the beach with a view of the ocean. Happy. Right? Yes, happy. But everything comes at a price. The triple and sometimes quadruple responsibilities of the different ventures I was involved in, the wide variety of.. Read more

On the Volatility of Startups

Posted on August 25th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Startups

        To a first approximation, all startups fail. This should never be a deterrent to starting one up. – I wish I could attribute this to some famous name, but hey, it’s all mine… and very true. As I mentioned before, these days I’m writing a white paper I call “Solutions to Information Overload: a Catalogue Raisonné”, being an encyclopedic compilation of every solution I know to Information Overload. Many of these are products from small startup companies, and I’m repeatedly delighted by the originality of thought and the positive energy characterizing these. Less delightful by far is the observation.. Read more

All Right! Email is Finally Adapting to the New Millennium!

Posted on August 14th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

Email solutions for the era of Information Overload These days I’m hard at work on a major effort: I’m writing a white paper I call “Solutions to Information Overload: a Catalogue Raisonné”. It will be an encyclopedic compilation of every solution I know to Information Overload, from software to training tools, from behavior change drives to personal strategies, from commercial products to innovative ideas. And the more solutions I include, the more I find – there will likely be over 150 of them! While many of the solutions I include have been around for a decade or more, I am.. Read more

New Insight Article: How to Lead Effective Global Virtual Teams

Posted on August 7th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Global, distributed teams are the norm in many industries,  and most of their interactions are virtual and asynchronous. This does add potentially destructive complications, but since it is a given part of our reality, the question isn’t whether we like it, but rather how do we make virtual teams work well – just as well as local teams, or perhaps even better? This is a subject to which I devoted some years of my career at Intel, where I co-founded and led a team we called the Virtual Collaboration Research Team (VCRT), whose charter was to develop future collaboration tools.. Read more

The Thousand Faces of Email – 2. Launch, Forget, and CYA!

Posted on July 24th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Continuing the series about the numerous unplanned uses to which email has been put since its humble origins in the sixties, let’s take a look at a shady pair of practices: using email to pass the buck, while covering one’s back end in case of trouble. The wrong kind of delegation That people use email to delegate tasks is hardly surprising;  many tasks need to be delegated by their nature, after all. Things become interesting when the delegation is unwarranted, but is pursued notwithstanding. It turns out that email is especially handy for this situation. Before email, you’d have to.. Read more

New Insight Article: How a Hi-Tech Company Can Engage in K-12 Education

Posted on July 10th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

One of the most praiseworthy things a company can do is help nurture the next generation of the communities in which it operates, by engaging in K-12 – especially school age – educational activity. There are numerous ways to do this, starting with simple money donations and ending with sophisticated, lively joint activities that apply the company’s people to do good in the local or national education system. Over the years I’ve been involved in K-12 programs in numerous ways, from when I took charge of creating Intel’s college relations activity in Israel in the early 90’s, through personal action.. Read more

The Thousand Faces of Email – 1. Email as a Documentation System

Posted on July 4th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Email: the beast with a thousand faces Believe it or not, when email was invented back in the sixties it was with a clear goal in mind: to allow people to mail “letters” – written communications – electronically. It was a one to one messaging system. Those were the days… Since then, email has assumed so many roles that its original purpose is almost secondary. Like a mythical shape-shifting beast, it has morphed into countless usage models, some useful and desirable, others harmful and even criminal. Even the basic paradigm of email – that of asynchronous, persistent message exchange –.. Read more

New Insight Article: Fostering Company Soul Through Internal Company Exhibits

Posted on June 12th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Creating educational exhibitions has always been a fascination of mine (in fact, since I left the cube farm and became free to choose my consulting work, I’ve been engaged in creating three exhibitions, and counting). So it was only natural that throughout my career, wherever I worked I ended up driving the creation of the local exhibit showcasing our technology and our company to visitors and employees alike. I firmly believe that the internal type of exhibition can play an important role in maintaining and fostering the organizational culture, and in this new insight article I share my reasoning –.. Read more

Intrapreneurship and the Hewlett Packard Medal of Defiance

Posted on May 24th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

New Insight Article: Intrapreneurship – How to Do It and Live to Tell the Tale

Posted on May 8th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I’ve spent a long career as a change agent in a large corporation, even if at first I didn’t call the role by that name; it just so happened that I was always trying to execute my “day job” in ways that pushed the envelope and made my employer adopt novel practices and directions. It was an exhilarating career path, though not without its frustrations. I know how exciting, how rewarding – and how difficult Intrapreneurship can be. In my latest insight article I share some reflections on the practice of intrapreneurship, and give you my take on how you.. Read more