Humble. Hungry. Smart.
Exceptional teams change the world. Dysfunctional teams don’t. One of my favorite movie scenes is from Apollo 13 after the crew realized they didn’t have enough oxygen to make it home. The team back at mission control rallied around a clear common cause - keeping humans alive -
Thriving in Adversity
When I was a kid, my dad owned a powder coating business. For those not familiar, powder coating is where you spray electrostatically charged colored powder onto metal and bake it in a large 450-degree oven that is about the size of a kitchen. During the 30 minutes of baking,
Human and Golf Course Architecture
> "Narrow fairways bordered by long grass make for bad golfers. They do so by destroying the harmony and continuity of the game, and in causing a stilted and cramped style, destroying all freedom of play." - Alister Mackenzie, The Spirit of St. Andrews Narrow fairways bordered by
Foundations of Financial Independence
Here are some slides I put together for a recent talk outlining the keys to Financial Independence. This is something I've been pursuing for a few years and thought I'd share my thoughts on the topic. If you have any questions or want to discuss further,
Sabbatical
I've regularly been posting articles - at least once per month - since 2010. This year, a few things came up that took my attention away from creating content to help technical folks get more out of their career. Firstly, I went through a particularly challenging promotion cycle
Alternative to Arguing
Sometimes you're right, and you know it. Unfortunately, we live in a world where those around us may not know what we know. Worse than that (by an order of magnitude), others around us may intellectually know they are wrong - or you are right - and fight
How to Drastically Reduce Your PowerPoint File Size
I just tried to email a PowerPoint I was working on to a colleague for some feedback and realized, to my horror, that the file size was over 80MB. Obviously, that won’t do. After digging around, I came to the conclusion that the massive amount of images I was
Wooden Blocks
I was listening to a Manager Tools [https://www.manager-tools.com/] podcast over the weekend and they shared a great Civil War era poem by Stephen Vincent Benet [https://gist.github.com/robertgreiner/8eb5066d1996cd01adf5] that applies very broadly to project management and leadership. In fact, they list it as their
DiSC
I spent the first several years of my career as a software developer with an incorrect understanding of my default behavioral tendencies. I thought because I was a programmer and loved being a programmer, that must mean I'm introverted - I mean, aren't we all? I
Leadership Worst Practices
I've been re-watching The Office [http://www.nbc.com/the-office] with my wife over the past several months, starting from the beginning and working through all of the episodes. One thing that struck me this time around, much more so than last time, is how Michael's