Scheduling Team Quotes

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.

Norman’s Law: The day the product team is announced, it is behind schedule and over its budget.

Even our recreation was scheduled. There was no time to look for birds or wander into the nearby woods. We were put into teams and sent into violent pursuit of a helpless ball.

For a girl without a job, or hobbies, or any kind of social life, Emma’s schedule was remarkably crowded. Dieting, walking, worrying, writing, exercising, surviving – all of these things ate into a day that might have offered endless possibilities had Emma not felt obliged to fill her great unfenced acres of spare time with the kind of trivial concerns and ridiculous compulsions that her doctors had been trying for years to clear from her head. This habit shone most brightly every Tuesday, when she took her place by the living-room window to await the arrival of her care team from Edinburgh. No matter what was going on around her or within her head, she arrived by the window on the stroke of noon every single week. The team never arrived before half past one.

The Nike swoop, the three Adidas stripes, the little Polo player on a horse, the Hollister seagull, the symbols of Philadelphia's professional sports teams, even our high school mascot that you athletes wear to battle other schools - some of you wear our Mustang to class even when there is no sporting event scheduled. These are your symbols, what you wear to prove that your identity matches the identity of others. Much like the Nazis had their swastika.

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have enough time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with your needs in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you will look back on fondly.

No. I’ve waited three years to be with this woman; the press can wait another week. Ella and I have only had a week to get to know each other in person, and it’s still a little strange. I want to keep her to myself a few more days before I have to share her with the whole damn world. It’s a holiday. I intend to enjoy it. I’ll talk to Ella about everything after Christmas, and we can schedule a meeting then. That should be enough of a promise to get the team off our backs for a few days, and if not, stop answering your phone.” Scott

The six-game schedule would begin in two weeks, one game against each of the other seven teams in their league.

Summary of Scrum vs Kanban Similarities: - Both are Lean and Agile - Both use pull scheduling - Both limit WIP - Both use transperency to drive process improvement - Both focus on delivering releasable software and often - Both are based on self-organizing teams - Both require breaking the work into pieces. - In both, the release plan is continuously optimized based on empirical data (velocity/lead time)

Nothing has a more profound and long-term degrading effect upon a development project than bad code. Bad schedules can be redone, bad requirements can be redefined. Bad team dynamics can be repaired. But bad code rots and ferments, becoming an inexorable weight that drags the team down.

She hates team building, and she’s always avoided the outdoors, which I didn’t understand until she let slip that her dad used to take her and Giselle camping. (God knows how he found the time, since he was so busy being a slimy, two-timing twat, but clearly he kept on top of his schedule.)

You are all more or less wearing the same types of clothes—look around the room and you will see it’s true. Now imagine you’re the only one not wearing a cool symbol. How would that make you feel? The Nike swoop, the three Adidas stripes, the little Polo player on a horse, the Hollister seagull, the symbols of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams, even our high school mascot that you athletes wear to battle other schools—some of you wear our Mustang to class even when there is no sporting event scheduled. These are your symbols, what you wear to prove that your identity matches the identity of others. Much like the Nazis had their swastika. We have a very loose dress code here and yet most of you pretty much dress the same. Why? Perhaps you feel it’s important not to stray too far from the norm. Would you not also wear a government symbol if it became important and normal to do so? If it were marketed the right way? If it was stitched on the most expensive brand at the mall? Worn by movie stars? The president of the United States?

Each cooperative in Mondragon has its own workplace structure, though there are similarities and tendencies that most of them share. The firm called Irizar, which manufactures products for trans-portation, from luxury coaches to city buses, exemplifies these tendencies. To encourage innovation and the diffusion of knowledge, there are no bosses or departments in Irizar. Rather, it has a flat organizational structure based on work teams with a high degree of autonomy. (One study remarks that they “set their own targets, establish their own work schedules, [and] organize the work process as they see fit.”) The teams also work with each other, so that knowledge is transmitted efficiently. Participation occurs also in the general assembly, which meets three times a year rather than the single annual meeting common in other Mondragon firms. Its subsidiaries in other countries have at least two general assemblies a year, where they approve the company’s strategic plan, investments, etc. These participatory structures have enabled Irizar to surpass its competitors in profitability and market share.69

If your whole team consists of novice programmers, your expertise will give you considerable power; but if the other team members are also experts, they will attach less importance to your technical expertise. In that case, they’ll pay more attention to organizational power, like the power to acquire extra hardware, to extend the schedule, or to capture a more interesting assignment.

Traditionally siloed technical teams interact through complex ticketing systems and ritualistic request procedures, which may require director-level intervention. A team taking a more DevOps approach talks about the product throughout its lifecycle, discussing requirements, features, schedules, resources, and whatever else might come up. The focus is on the product, not building fiefdoms and amassing political power.

The producer’s responsibilities include hiring and building teams; writing contracts; contributing to the game’s design; managing the team’s work schedule; balancing the game’s budget; resolving disputes between creative and programming leads; acting as the team representative to upper management and publishers; coordinating the creation of outside resources such as art, music, and cutscenes; and arranging testing and localization.

As a team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate.” In his handbook Leading Teams, Hackman reminds us of “Brook’s Law”: the adage that adding staff to speed up a behind-schedule project “has no better chance of working … than would a scheme to produce a baby quickly by assigning nine women to be pregnant for one month each … adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have enough time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with your needs in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

It takes an army to make a movie. Camera crews, lighting crews, wardrobe crews, makeup crews, hair crews, painters, builders (called grips), a crew to provide the props, a crew to provide the furnishings (the art department), electricians, special-effects people, stunt performers, stand-ins, the accountant, scheduling and finance (called the unit production manager), catering and someone to provide snacks and drinks (called craft service), and the team of walkie-talkie-armed Gestapo that police the second-by-second momentum of shooting: the assistant director staff.

Outcomes indicators include product vision, business objectives, and capabilities (high-level product functionality), not detail requirements. These outcome characteristics define a releasable product and quality objectives define a reliable and adaptable (works today, easy to enhance) product. These are the critical value traits, then teams need to strive to meet constraints—scope, schedule, and cost—but as secondary in importance to the value components. In many, if not most, agile projects schedule becomes the most critical constraint and is timeboxed (fixed) and scope varies.

Your team had to crunch for at least a month before each major milestone (E3, alpha, beta, etc.) and even though you bought them all dinners to make up for it, you still can’t stop thinking about the missed anniversaries, the lost birthday parties, and the evenings they didn’t get to spend with their kids because they were stuck in meetings about the best color schemes for your plumber’s overalls. Is there a way to make great video games without that sort of sacrifice? Is it possible to develop a game without putting in endless hours? Will there ever be a reliable formula for making games that allows for more predictable schedules?

There was no escape: The entire Elliott 503 Mark II software project had to be abandoned, and with it, over thirty man-years of programming effort, equivalent to nearly one man’s active working life, and I was responsible, both as designer and as manager, for wasting it. ... How did we recover from the catastrophe? First, we classified our 503 customers into groups, according to the nature and size of the hardware configurations which they had bought ... We assigned to each group of customers a small team of programmers and told the team leader to visit the customers to find out what they wanted; to select the easiest request to fulfill, and to make plans (but no promises) to implement it. In no case would we consider a request for a feature that would take more than three months to implement and deliver. The project leader would then have to convince me that the customers’ request was reasonable, that the design of the new feature was appropriate, and that the plans and schedules for implementation were realistic. Above all, I did not allow anything to be done which I did not myself understand. It worked! The software requested began to be delivered on the promised dates. With an increase in our confidence and that of our customers, we were able to undertake fulfilling slightly more ambitious requests. Within a year we had recovered from the disaster. Within two years, we even had some moderately satisfied customers.

The prosecution apparently also used other less-than-ethical and hardly professional tactics as well, including “hay stacking.” Hay stacking involves deliberately making it difficult for the other side to sort out documents and evidence - much like looking for a needle in a haystack. Along with delivering documents in disarray, another bratty move involves delivering evidence without giving the other side enough time to make sense of it. Like delivering piles of written evidence less than 30 minutes before court is scheduled to begin. On more than one occasion, Nelson was left scrambling to sort out hundreds, if not thousands of pages. Sure, things like this might happen occasionally. But [Attorney General] Ellison and his prosecution team were doing this repeatedly.

When his support team on the surface finally called down to him on September 14, the day his experiment was scheduled to wrap up, it was only August 20 in his journal. He thought only a month had gone by. His experience of time’s passage had compressed by a factor of two. Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

So we need to make a schedule, but where do we begin? The common approach is to make a to-do list. We write down all the things we want to do and hope we’ll find the time throughout the day to do them. Unfortunately, this method has some serious flaws. Anyone who has tried keeping such a list knows many tasks tend to get pushed from one day to the next, and the next. Instead of starting with what we’re going to do, we should begin with why we’re going to do it. And to do that, we must begin with our values. According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, values are “how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.” They are attributes of the person we want to be. For example, they may include being an honest person, being a loving parent, or being a valued part of a team. We never achieve our values any more than finishing a painting would let us achieve being creative. A value is like a guiding star; it’s the fixed point we use to help us navigate our life choices.

Of course, many leaders do ask questions constantly—questions such as these: Why are you behind schedule? Who isn't keeping up? What's the problem with this project? Whose idea was that? Too often, we ask questions that disempower rather than empower our subordinates. These questions cast blame; they are not genuine requests for information. Other sorts of questions are often no more than thinly veiled attempts at manipulation: Don't you agree with me on that? Aren't you a team player? If you tend to ask these sorts of questions, this book is for you. So the point isn't that leaders just don't ask enough questions. Often, we don't ask the right questions. Or we don't ask questions in a way that will lead to honest and informative answers. Many of us don't know how to listen effectively to the answers to questions—and haven't established a climate in which asking questions is encouraged. And that's where this book comes in. The purpose of Leading with Questions is to help you become a stronger leader by learning how to ask the right questions effectively, how to listen effectively, and how to create a climate in which asking questions becomes as natural as breathing.

The team is showing its appreciation to the host families by taking them to a water park on Sunday. I know Mac is going out of town, but I thought you might still want to go. I mean, not as a date or anything. I’m going to invite the whole family.” “You don’t have to work Sunday?” “I got scheduled off.” “Sounds like fun. We could pack a picnic lunch--” “I’ll take care of that. As my thank you. All you have to do is bring yourself.” “And a bathing suit.” He grinned. “Yeah, and a bathing suit.” “And a towel. And suntan lotion…” “Maybe it’d be simpler if I just said I’ll take care of the tickets and eats.” “Okay, but I’ll go ahead and warn you not to take it personally that Mom and Dad aren’t really into water parks. It’s that whole not-using-the-exercise-equipment-as-intended thing Dad has going.” His grin grew. “I won’t take it personally.” “Okay, then, Sunday.” As though suddenly realized how intimate it seemed to be in my bedroom, he cleared his throat and took a step back. He gave my room one more look and took another step back. “It’s amazing what a room can reveal.” Then he walked down the hallway and knocked on Tiffany’s door. I wondered what he’d discover looking into her room.

When I started in real estate, despite high ambition, I was constrained by the same 24 hours as everyone else. My early success came from a grueling schedule, long hours, and the high price of near burn-out. In self-defense, I devised a system that featured direct marketing in place of traditional prospecting plus a highly effective team, with all the non-rainmaker tasks delegated to them. This took me to the top of the profession, twice #1 in RE/MAX worldwide in commissions earned, and 15 years as one of the top agents—working less hours than most. While an active agent, I consistently sold over 500 homes a year, even while starting and developing a second business, training and coaching more millionaire agents than any other coach. Without the inspiration of Dan Kennedy’s direct marketing methods and his extraordinary, extreme time-management philosophy, these achievements simply would not have been possible. LEVERAGING yourself, by media in place of manual labor, and with other people is very intimidating to most real estate agents and to most small businesspeople. It frankly is not easy to get right, but it is the quantum leap that uniquely and simultaneously lifts income and supports a great lifestyle. —CRAIG PROCTOR, CRAIGPROCTOR.COM

You might expect that if you spent such an extended period in twelve different households, what you would gather is twelve different ideas about how to raise children: there would be the strict parents and the lax parents and the hyperinvolved parents and the mellow parents and on and on. What Lareau found, however, is something much different. There were only two parenting “philosophies,” and they divided almost perfectly along class lines. The wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way. The wealthier parents were heavily involved in their children’s free time, shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers and coaches and teammates. One of the well-off children Lareau followed played on a baseball team, two soccer teams, a swim team, and a basketball team in the summer, as well as playing in an orchestra and taking piano lessons. That kind of intensive scheduling was almost entirely absent from the lives of the poor children. Play for them wasn’t soccer practice twice a week. It was making up games outside with their siblings and other kids in the neighborhood. What a child did was considered by his or her parents as something separate from the adult world and not particularly consequential. One girl from a working-class family—Katie Brindle—sang in a choir after school. But she signed up for it herself and walked to choir practice on her own. Lareau writes: What Mrs. Brindle doesn’t do that is routine for middle-class mothers is view her daughter’s interest in singing as a signal to look for other ways to help her develop that interest into a formal talent. Similarly Mrs. Brindle does not discuss Katie’s interest in drama or express regret that she cannot afford to cultivate her daughter’s talent. Instead she frames Katie’s skills and interests as character traits—singing and acting are part of what makes Katie “Katie.” She sees the shows her daughter puts on as “cute” and as a way for Katie to “get attention.

Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.

Think about it,” Obama said to us on the flight over. “The Republican Party is the only major party in the world that doesn’t even acknowledge that climate change is happening.” He was leaning over the seats where Susan and I sat. We chuckled. “Even the National Front believes in climate change,” I said, referring to the far-right party in France. “No, think about it,” he said. “That’s where it all began. Once you convince yourself that something like that isn’t true, then…” His voice trailed off, and he walked out of the room. For six years, Obama had been working to build what would become the Paris agreement, piece by piece. Because Congress wouldn’t act, he had to promote clean energy, and regulate fuel efficiency and emissions through executive action. With dozens of other nations, he made climate change an issue in our bilateral relationship, helping design their commitments. At international conferences, U.S. diplomats filled in the details of a framework. Since the breakthrough with China, and throughout 2015, things had been falling into place. When we got to Paris, the main holdout was India. We were scheduled to meet with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Obama and a group of us waited outside the meeting room, when the Indian delegation showed up in advance of Modi. By all accounts, the Indian negotiators had been the most difficult. Obama asked to talk to them, and for the next twenty minutes, he stood in a hallway having an animated argument with two Indian men. I stood off to the side, glancing at my BlackBerry, while he went on about solar power. One guy from our climate team came over to me. “I can’t believe he’s doing this,” he whispered. “These guys are impossible.” “Are you kidding?” I said. “It’s an argument about science. He loves this.” Modi came around the corner with a look of concern on his face, wondering what his negotiators were arguing with Obama about. We moved into the meeting room, and a dynamic became clear. Modi’s team, which represented the institutional perspective of the Indian government, did not want to do what is necessary to reach an agreement. Modi, who had ambitions to be a transformative leader of India, and a person of global stature, was torn. This is one reason why we had done the deal with China; if India was alone, it was going to be hard for Modi to stay out. For nearly an hour, Modi kept underscoring the fact that he had three hundred million people with no electricity, and coal was the cheapest way to grow the Indian economy; he cared about the environment, but he had to worry about a lot of people mired in poverty. Obama went through arguments about a solar initiative we were building, the market shifts that would lower the price of clean energy. But he still hadn’t addressed a lingering sense of unfairness, the fact that nations like the United States had developed with coal, and were now demanding that India avoid doing the same thing. “Look,” Obama finally said, “I get that it’s unfair. I’m African American.” Modi smiled knowingly and looked down at his hands. He looked genuinely pained. “I know what it’s like to be in a system that’s unfair,” he went on. “I know what it’s like to start behind and to be asked to do more, to act like the injustice didn’t happen. But I can’t let that shape my choices, and neither should you.” I’d never heard him talk to another leader in quite that way. Modi seemed to appreciate it. He looked up and nodded.

All the many successes and extraordinary accomplishments of the Gemini still left NASA’s leadership in a quandary. The question voiced in various expressions cut to the heart of the problem: “How can we send men to the moon, no matter how well they fly their ships, if they’re pretty helpless when they get there? We’ve racked up rendezvous, docking, double-teaming the spacecraft, starting, stopping, and restarting engines; we’ve done all that. But these guys simply cannot work outside their ships without exhausting themselves and risking both their lives and their mission. We’ve got to come up with a solution, and quick!” One manned Gemini mission remained on the flight schedule. Veteran Jim Lovell would command the Gemini 12, and his space-walking pilot would be Buzz Aldrin, who built on the experience of the others to address all problems with incredible depth and finesse. He took along with him on his mission special devices like a wrist tether and a tether constructed in the same fashion as one that window washers use to keep from falling off ledges. The ruby slippers of Dorothy of Oz couldn’t compare with the “golden slippers” Aldrin wore in space—foot restraints, resembling wooden Dutch shoes, that he could bolt to a work station in the Gemini equipment bay. One of his neatest tricks was to bring along portable handholds he could slap onto either the Gemini or the Agena to keep his body under control. A variety of space tools went into his pressure suit to go along with him once he exited the cabin. On November 11, 1966, the Gemini 12, the last of its breed, left earth and captured its Agena quarry. Then Buzz Aldrin, once and for all, banished the gremlins of spacewalking. He proved so much a master at it that he seemed more to be taking a leisurely stroll through space than attacking the problems that had frustrated, endangered, and maddened three previous astronauts and brought grave doubts to NASA leadership about the possible success of the manned lunar program. Aldrin moved down the nose of the Gemini to the Agena like a weightless swimmer, working his way almost effortlessly along a six-foot rail he had locked into place once he was outside. Next came looping the end of a hundred-foot line from the Agena to the Gemini for a later experiment, the job that had left Dick Gordon in a sweatbox of exhaustion. Aldrin didn’t show even a hint of heavy breathing, perspiration, or an increased heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice was crisp, sharp, clear. What he did seemed incredibly easy, but it was the direct result of his incisive study of the problems and the equipment he’d brought from earth. He also made sure to move in carefully timed periods, resting between major tasks, and keeping his physical exertion to a minimum. When he reached the workstation in the rear of the Gemini, he mounted his feet and secured his body to the ship with the waist tether. He hooked different equipment to the ship, dismounted other equipment, shifted them about, and reattached them. He used a unique “space wrench” to loosen and tighten bolts with effortless skill. He snipped wires, reconnected wires, and connected a series of tubes. Mission Control hung on every word exchanged between the two astronauts high above earth. “Buzz, how do those slippers work?” Aldrin’s enthusiastic voice came back like music. “They’re great. Great! I don’t have any trouble positioning my body at all.” And so it went, a monumental achievement right at the end of the Gemini program. Project planners had reached all the way to the last inch with one crucial problem still unsolved, and the man named Aldrin had whipped it in spectacular fashion on the final flight. Project Gemini was

He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season. But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in the two biggest games on the schedule. He wasn't the player anybody expected him to be, but he got the job done-at times spectacularly.

Here’s his seven-step checklist: “Write down five pre-existing company goals or priorities that will be impacted by the decision. Focusing on what is important will help you avoid the rationalization trap of making up reasons for your choices after the fact.” “Write down at least three, but ideally four or more, realistic alternatives. One can be staying put and doing nothing. It might take a little effort and creativity, but no other practice improves decisions more than expanding your choices.” “Write down the most important information you are missing. We risk ignoring what we don’t know because we are distracted by what we do know, especially in today’s information-rich businesses.” “Write down the impact your decision will have one year in the future. Telling a brief story of the expected outcome of the decision will help you identify similar scenarios that can provide useful perspective.” “Involve a team of at least two but no more than six stakeholders. Getting more perspectives reduces your bias and increases buy-in—but bigger groups have diminishing returns.” “Write down what was decided, as well as why and how much the team supports the decision. Writing these things down increases commitment and establishes a basis to measure the results of the decision.” “Schedule a decision follow-up in one to two months. We often forget to check in when decisions are going poorly, missing the opportunity to make corrections and learn from what’s happened.

For how far in the future are you optimizing your organization? Are you mentoring solely to instruct or also to learn? Will you know if you’ve accomplished your organizational and personal goals? Are you measuring the things you need to be? Have you assigned a team to write up the company’s goals three to five years out? What will it take to redesign your management team’s schedule so you can mentor one another? How can you reward staff members who attain their measurable goals?

Another way in which values can be expressed is in how different teams are treated throughout the organization. As also mentioned in Part III, it is common in startups for engineering teams, especially web and mobile development ones, to be valued more than other, nonengineering teams. While this usually is not explicitly stated, it becomes apparent through behaviors such as allowing more flexible schedules or remote opportunities for engineers; giving them a higher budget for swag, training, and travel; and giving them more recognition for their accomplishments.

How does the product manager keep the entire team on schedule despite the apparent random and divergent methods of designers? Encourage their free exploration, but hold them to the schedule (and budget) constraints. There is nothing like a firm deadline to get creative minds to reach convergence.

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Here’s a proven sales meeting checklist of pre-meeting, during meeting, and post-meeting best practices and tips to follow and live by every day: Have clear meeting goals and expected outcomes documented and stated in email before and after meetings. Put agendas that are agreed to by your customers in meeting calendar invites. Meeting agendas should start with introductions and customers’ priorities/challenges review. Meeting agendas should close with discussion and time for questions. Research the company and recent announcements and know how their business is doing. Understand the context of their industry, too. Research the people attending your meeting and identify shared interests and shared executive connections. Connect with meeting attendees on LinkedIn before meeting. Some people believe this should be done after a meeting. My point of view is that it’s an important touch point when a prospect accepts your request to connect. Make the connection, and use your connection’s response and speed of response as a gauge of their awareness. If they connect fast, then it may mean they are excited to meet with you. If they don’t connect quickly, it could mean it’s not top of mind. Both are important to know. Don’t forget to personalize the message. Reconfirm agenda and meeting attendee participation. It’s good to do this the day before the meeting is scheduled to happen. Prepare a list of discovery and qualification questions to ask the prospect. The questions should preferably be open ended. Share the questions with your internal team to get alignment. It’s a requirement and best practice to brief executives attending the meeting with you beforehand. Share with your executives the context, current situation, and everything you learned during company, industry, and executive research. Your executives are busy. Help them help you. Be clear on what their role in the meeting is. Introduce meeting attendees at meeting outset, and let everyone have a voice. Go around and have people share their role and what they hope to get out of the meeting. Take thorough notes, capturing your customer’s words. Listen more and talk less. Watch the clock to begin and end meetings as promised. Leave time for questions and discussion at the end. Recap meeting outcomes and next steps before ending the call. Send meeting follow-up notes with clear action items the same day of the meeting using your customer’s words.

Many people report that the greatest fear they face today is the fear of not having enough money to maintain their lifestyle throughout retirement. Does this sound like you? Social Security is still a vital role in retirement income. The greatest benefit Social Security provides is regular income that is guaranteed to increase over time and continue as long as you live. Keep in mind, Social Security taxes are just that – taxes. As a result, a worker’s retirement security is entirely dependent upon political decisions. Nevertheless, for now, this benefit makes Social Security one of the most valuable sources of income during one’s retirement. Unfortunately, most Americans do not know much about Social Security. They know even less about how to maximize the benefits that may help sustain them throughout retirement. Whether you are depending upon Social Security to make a significant impact on your retirement income or just a part of your entire financial portfolio, it would be wise to understand which claiming options are available to get the most out of your Social Security income. Even in these tough times and volatile markets, we help our clients take a comprehensive approach to their retirement planning. We offer a complimentary service that we call Social Security Maximization or SSI Max. There are hundreds of ways to claim your Social Security, but which one is right for you and your family? One simple mistake or misjudgment of the program can cost you thousands of dollars that you rightfully deserve. Download our free eBook: 4 Myths about Social Security Income to learn a few common misconceptions about Social Security Income. Find out your SSI Max Strategy Our team of experts use a proprietary system that links to the government’s official Social Security website. It only takes a few minutes to generate your SSI Max Report. Click here to see a sample report and act quickly to get your very own personalized report. Just schedule a call with me to find out your very own, optimal SSI Max Strategy! Click here to schedule now! P.S. – Be sure to ask me about including a “Shortfall Analysis” in your report. Our clients are LOVING this feature! Seriously! What is it? Our Advanced Case Design team builds a comprehensive financial plan best suited for your specific situation by considering all of your retirement vehicles. This is, without a doubt, the best retirement planning offer you will see in a very, very long time!

But in 2009, even as the British track cycling team was preparing for the London Olympics, Brailsford embarked upon a new challenge. He created a road cycling team, Team Sky, while continuing to oversee the track team. On the day the new outfit was announced to the world, Brailsford also announced that they would win the Tour de France within five years. Most people laughed at this aspiration. One commentator said: “Brailsford has set himself up for an almighty fall.” But in 2012, two years ahead of schedule, Bradley Wiggins became the first-ever British rider to win the event. The following year, Team Sky triumphed again when Chris Froome, another Brit, won the general classification. It was widely acclaimed as one of the most extraordinary feats in British sporting history. How did it happen? How did Brailsford conquer not one cycling discipline, but two? These were the questions I asked him over dinner at the team’s small hotel after the tour of the facilities. His answer was clear: “It is about marginal gains,” he said. “The approach comes from the idea that if you break down a big goal into small parts, and then improve on each of them, you will deliver a huge increase when you put them all together.” It sounds simple, but as a philosophy, marginal gains has become one of the hottest concepts not just in sports, but beyond. It has formed the basis of business conferences, and seminars and has even been debated in the armed forces. Many British sports now employ a director of marginal gains.

Pinned to the left-hand wall opposite the construction schedule was another butcher-block-size sheet almost identical in form, except this one, O’Sullivan said, was called a “submittal schedule.” It was also a checklist, but it didn’t specify construction tasks; it specified communication tasks. For the way the project managers dealt with the unexpected and the uncertain was by making sure the experts spoke to one another—on X date regarding Y process. The experts could make their individual judgments, but they had to do so as part of a team that took one another’s concerns into account, discussed unplanned developments, and agreed on the way forward. While no one could anticipate all the problems, they could foresee where and when they might occur. The checklist therefore detailed who had to talk to whom, by which date, and about what aspect of construction—who had to share (or “submit”) particular kinds of information before the next steps could proceed.

U4NBA News: Notice The Version Of NBA 2K18 Is For You NBA 2K18 is scheduled to debut on store shelves until September 15th for those that who pre-order. It'll come to Xbox One, PS4, Windows PCs and mobile. You must have noticed some NBA 2K18 version informations to help you to decide which version of NBA 2K18 is the one to pre-order now or purchase on release day. NBA 2K18 Standard Edition NBA 2K18 Standard Edition is for mild fans of the series that don't care as much about Virtual Currency as they do getting access four-days before everyone else. Standard Edition is $59.99. Buyers get 5,000 in Virtual Currency, 10 Weeks of MyTeam Packs and some MyTeam themed cosmetic items for use in the game. This version will come to the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PCs and the Nintendo Switch. This version of the game gets you access to the NBA 2K18 Early Tip-Off Weekend, provided you place a pre-order before September 15th. Also Read: Kyrie Irving Will Grace The Cover Of The Standard Edition Of NBA 2K18 NBA 2K18 Legend Edition NBA 2K18 Legend Edition is the upgraded version of the standard game and the version is for big-time fans of Shaq. It’s also for anyone that loves MyCareer and wants an early jumpstart to their character. It doesn’t come with any exclusive features. Instead, it packs Virtual Currency that could make starting out in MyCareer a little easier. Legend Edition is $99.99. There's 100,000 in Virtual Currency included with Legend Edition. Again, you can use Virtual Currency to buy upgrades for your character in the game. The more Virtual Currency you have, the easier it’ll be to get extras in MyCareer. Character add-ons include a Shaq Championship Ring, Shaq Attaq shoes, Shaq Jerseys and Shaq clothing. There are 20 weeks of MyTeam Packs instead of the 10 that the basic version comes with. Physical copies of this game come with 5 Panini cards, Shaq MyTeam Stickers and a poster. Xbox One, PS4, PCs and the Nintendo Switch will get this version. This version qualifies for Early Tip-Off Weekend. NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold is for the player that enjoys the series year after year and will find themselves spending hours across MyCareer and MyTeam modes for a long time. It’s also for the fan that loves basketball games and doesn’t have a lot of free time to dump into the game to earn Virtual Currency. This version costs $149.99, the most that any version of the game does. Shoppers get 250,000 in Virtual Currency when they buy Legend Edition Gold. There's 40 weekly MyTeam Packs. Developers guaranteed that players who own those packs can get at least one of Shaq and a TEAM 2K Card. Buyers also get the Shaq Attaq Shoes, the championship ring and Shaq Themed Jerseys and apparel. Physical add-ons include a poster, 10 Panini Cards, Shaq MyTeam Stickers and a lenticular printing. Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows PCs and PS4 will get this version. The game qualifies for Early Tip-Off Weekend. In order meet player's demand for NBA 2K18 MT during Early Tip-Off Weekend, we decide to bring forward the activity where offers coupon code "NBA2017". You can buy NBA 2K18 MT from now on to gain up to 5% off.

Brown had too many quality players for the thirty-three-man roster. Rather than waive them to other teams in the AAFC, he devised a secret plan with owner McBride by which several players who had been cut would land jobs with the Zone/Yellow Cab Co., with schedules arranged so that they could report to League Park in Cleveland, where the Browns practiced. Thus was born the “taxi squad” in pro football.

the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of extreme ownership: There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” It’s time to look at the man (or the woman) in the mirror. He goes on to say: “In any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failure, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.” For example, if you are overbooking, it’s not the fault of your front office team. It’s your fault by not being clear on how you want to be scheduled, not giving the team the training they need, or in the worst case, having the wrong people performing the task. When we begin to look at all the shortcomings in our practices as problems that we have created as leaders, we can then move forward to solve those problems. However, when we don’t accept responsibility and become the victim, we become powerless.

In addition they travelled maddening distances between games with very few rest days, in a schedule to suit the counties they played rather than logic. Though no Test matches, the tour finished in Bristol with a game against a Gloucestershire team including WG and Gilbert Jessop. The captain of England at the time was Pelham 'Plum' Warner, who wrote.. There is a case in point of the extraordinary power the game has over its votaries in this matter of sinking all prejudices and dislike, real or imaginary, in the tour in the United Kingdom of a team from India composed of men of all castes and creeds. I make so bold as to say that this travelling and living together of natives of various castes and creeds will have far-reaching effect in India.

PRE-INTERVIEW QUESTIONS What type of consulting does the firm do? In what industries does the firm specialize? How big is the firm? How many domestic and international offices does the firm have? How many professionals are in the firm? What kinds of training programs does the firm offer? What type of work does an entry-level consultant do? How much client contact does an entry-level consultant have the first year? Does the firm have a mentor program? How often do first-years sleep in their own beds? What’s their travel schedule like? How many hours make up a typical work day? How is a case team picked? How often do consultants get reviewed? How many consultants does the firm expect to hire this year? How does that compare to last year? Where do the consultants go when they leave the firm? Is it possible to transfer to other offices, even international offices?

I have earmarked in my schedule a certain percentage of my time that I’m always out talking to customers and prospects and learning from them. I try to organize these meetings to happen in-person because I want to see the customer in their natural environment. If I can’t get it in-person in their of office, then I’ll try to do it over coffee, or over a walk, or over lunch, because I want to get them in an environment where their guard is down and we can get them talking about things.

Chapter Five Monday. 12:50 PM. The wrestling room. Because of the assembly, classes for the rest of the day were shortened so school could still dismiss on time, which meant that my science class wasn’t going to start until one-o-clock. After I saw that it was ten ‘til, I rushed out of the assembly and headed straight for the wrestling room. It was the first day of training with my new ninja clan, and I was already behind schedule. A few months ago, during the week of the talent show, I stumbled upon a second gymnasium that wasn’t being used. It was the wrestling room. Coach Cooper, the gym teacher (same last name as me, but not related… or is he? Dun dun dunnnnnnn… no, I’m kidding. We’re not related), said that Buchanan School used to have a wrestling team, but cut it from the program because of money issues about ten years back. I asked if it was cool that I used the room for a martial arts club, and he said yeah.

When Bouchard’s twin-processing operation was in full swing, he amassed a staff of eighteen—psychologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, pathologists, geneticists, even dentists. Several of his collaborators were highly distinguished: David Lykken was a widely recognized expert on personality, and Auke Tellegen, a Dutch psychologist on the Minnesota faculty, was an expert on personality measuring. In scheduling his twin-evaluations, Bouchard tried limiting the testing to one pair of twins at a time so that he and his colleagues could devote the entire week—with a grueling fifty hours of tests—to two genetically identical individuals. Because it is not a simple matter to determine zygosity—that is, whether twins are identical or fraternal—this was always the first item of business. It was done primarily by comparing blood samples, fingerprint ridge counts, electrocardiograms, and brain waves. As much background information as possible was collected from oral histories and, when possible, from interviews with relatives and spouses. I.Q. was tested with three different instruments: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a Raven, Mill-Hill composite test, and the first principal components of two multiple abilities batteries. The Minnesota team also administered four personality inventories (lengthy questionnaires aimed at characterizing and measuring personality traits) and three tests of occupational interests. In all the many personality facets so laboriously measured, the Minnesota team was looking for degrees of concordance and degrees of difference between the separated twins. If there was no connection between the mean scores of all twins sets on a series of related tests—I.Q. tests, for instance—the concordance figure would be zero percent. If the scores of every twin matched his or her twin exactly, the concordance figure would be 100 percent. Statistically, any concordance above 30 percent was considered significant, or rather indicated the presence of some degree of genetic influence. As the week of testing progressed, the twins were wired with electrodes, X-rayed, run on treadmills, hooked up for twenty-four hours with monitoring devices. They were videotaped and a series of questionnaires and interviews elicited their family backgrounds, educations, sexual histories, major life events, and they were assessed for psychiatric problems such as phobias and anxieties. An effort was made to avoid adding questions to the tests once the program was under way because that meant tampering with someone else’s test; it also would necessitate returning to the twins already tested with more questions. But the researchers were tempted. In interviews, a few traits not on the tests appeared similar in enough twin pairs to raise suspicions of a genetic component. One of these was religiosity. The twins might follow different faiths, but if one was religious, his or her twin more often than not was religious as well. Conversely, when one was a nonbeliever, the other generally was too. Because this discovery was considered too intriguing to pass by, an entire additional test was added, an existing instrument that included questions relating to spiritual beliefs. Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely—from the low thirties to the high seventies— every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.

In 2016, pop icon and actor Selena Gomez posted a photo on Instagram of herself in a dressing room watching The Big Bang Theory on her computer with the caption that read “The one thing that gets me going before anything… Sheldon Cooper—Big Bang Theory.” Molaro saw the post, which sparked an idea. Steve Molaro: After I had heard she liked the show, we approached Selena’s team a couple of times to have her on, but it never worked out due to scheduling reasons, etc. I’m a fan of hers and would have loved to have had her on. I never even got to pitch it to them, but I had kicked around an idea that Amy had been complaining about her awful stepsister and what a bitch she was. Which would be news because we didn’t even know she had one. This, of course, was before we established Amy’s dad and mom were still together. When we meet this stepsister, played by Selena, she’s beautiful and great and everyone loves her and Amy was just being jealous. It never got further than that. It would have been fun if it could have worked

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Jeff and I often discussed ways to improve the S-Team meetings. Shortly after a particularly difficult presentation in early 2004, we had some downtime on a business flight (no Wi-Fi yet on planes), so we read and discussed an essay called “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within,” by Edward Tufte, a Yale professor who is an authority on the visualization of information.1 Tufte identified in one sentence the problem we’d been experiencing: “As analysis becomes more causal, multivariate, comparative, evidence based, and resolution-intense,” he writes, “the more damaging the bullet list becomes.” That description fit our discussions at the S-Team meetings: complex, interconnected, requiring plenty of information to explore, with greater and greater consequences connected to decisions. Such analysis is not well served by a linear progression of slides that makes it difficult to refer one idea to another, sparsely worded bits of text that don’t fully express an idea, and visual effects that are more distracting than enlightening. Rather than making things clear and simple, PowerPoint can strip the discussion of important nuance. In our meetings, even when a presenter included supporting information in the notes or accompanying audio, the PowerPoint presentation was never enough. Besides, the Amazon audience of tightly scheduled, experienced executives was eager to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible. They would pepper the presenter with questions and push to get to the punch line, regardless of the flow of slides. Sometimes the questions did not serve to clarify a point or move the presentation along but would instead lead the entire group away from the main argument. Or some questions might be premature and would be answered in a later slide, thus forcing the presenter to go over the same ground twice.

The First 10 Lies They Tell You In High School: 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have enough time to get to your classes before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with your needs in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

Managing when you are located far from your boss presents a different set of challenges. The risk is greater of falling out of step without realizing it. This puts the onus on you to exert even more discipline over communication, scheduling calls and meetings to be sure you stay aligned. It also is even more critical to establish clear and comprehensive metrics so that your boss gets a reasonable picture of what is going on and you can more effectively manage by exception. If it is humanly possible, you should plan to have one or more in-person meetings with your boss early on. It is essential to make face-to-face connections early on to begin to establish a basis of confidence and trust (the same is true if you’re leading a virtual team). So if this means you need to fight for the resources and fly halfway around the world, you should do it.

Sample Quarterly Review Summary Successes Maintained peak-performance habits Stabilized the company and team Raised funds for next phase of growth Upgraded company-wide marketing Launched leadership development program Failures Worked too much, felt worn out Failed to follow-up on marketing project on time Missed language learning goals in Portuguese Extended two project deadlines unnecessarily Didn’t spend sufficient time with family and friends Insights Perfectionism is a big development opportunity Reading should be scheduled into the day The mind needs to be trained as much as the body Weekly reviews must result in new weekly commitments I want to become world-class at peak performance Actions Determine what are the non-negotiables in my life Increase output with a color-coded master calendar Bring the joy/be more intentional Hire a virtual assistant Create a weekly accountability checklist

We assign a buddy or a mentor to help them with questions. We’ll schedule time with our executive director for the first day. We’ll schedule welcome lunches with their team and various other people.” But it starts on the first day. “We make certain the manager welcomes the new hire at the front door.” New hires are introduced at staff devotions, and their new coworkers pray for them and thank God that they are an answer to prayer. The whole experience is designed to give the new employees total confidence that they made the right decision and have truly taken the right next step in God’s pathway for their calling. The third stage is true onboarding, which takes place over the first ninety days. It revolves around not only role-centered training but also organizational mission, vision, values, and history, delivered in dialogue with multiple voices in the organization

The decay in performance usually starts with neglecting amplification—suppressing meaningful feedback in the interest of schedule or fiscal pressure. The team loses awareness of itself, of how dramatically performance is degrading. Small errors build up, shortcuts become the norm, and the system proceeds, relying on being lucky rather than being knowledgeable and rigorous. So feedback stops first.

if we use electrodes to study its oddly intelligent brain, we can replicate a pack of cloned genius dogs to do our bidding.” Everyone in the room smiled along with their leader. They followed his gaze to the TV monitor, now showing a photo of Wolfe with his arm around a young woman, and talking to a smiling black couple, while the dog sat at their feet. If any of those people happened to witness Jake Wolfe’s murder, they’d be killed too. He turned to Gisela and demanded, “Is the laboratory completion on schedule?” “Yes, it’s ready now, awaiting the scientists.” She tapped the remote and played a video. Attached to the mansion, in what appeared to be a five-car garage, a secret laboratory had been prepared for two epidemiologists Belken intended to kidnap. They would be forced to mutate the 1918 influenza pathogen into an even deadlier strain to be used as an aerosolized microbe weapon sprayed from ships or planes onto targeted cities. Their other task, equally important, would be to develop a new flu shot to immunize against the threat. There were murmurs of approval around the table. Belken nodded, hearing their flattering remarks. “Any report on our team kidnapping the targets?

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say “first alarm clock” because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup. That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life. I learned in SEAL training that if I wanted any extra time to study the academic material we were given, prepare our room and my uniforms for an inspection, or just stretch out aching muscles, I had to make that time because it did not exist on the written schedule. When I checked into my first SEAL Team, that practice continued. If I wanted extra time to work on my gear, clean my weapons, study tactics or new technology, I needed to make that time. The only way you could make time, was to get up early. That took discipline.

These teams started with a provisional plan, the “sheet music.” Film crews had a detailed daily schedule. The SWAT team outlined a plan for each mission—which specified, for example, who would cover the exits of a house, where snipers would be stationed, and when officers would bust down the door. But when things didn’t go as expected, because people understood one another’s roles so well and how their roles fit together, teams were adept at revising their plan on the spot.

Time pressure was most destructive when people felt they were “on a treadmill” because their schedules were packed with fragmented and unimportant tasks, unnecessary meetings, and constantly shifting plans. The resulting frustration, anxiety, and inability to concentrate on their work undermined creativity. In contrast, time pressure didn’t undermine creativity when people felt their team was on an important mission and members had long stretches to focus on essential solo work.

Despite all this pressure—and the pressure is real, no question about that—in the face of all this pressure, look back to the Principle and distill it to this: Your highest priority is delivering value. If you’ve hit the schedule but failed to satisfy your customer, or if you’ve come in under budget but failed to satisfy your customer, or kept your team intact and focused and committed but failed to satisfy your customer, ask yourself, what have you accomplished? As Mike shared with me, for Principle 1, the focus is on value. “The ‘v’ in MVP is ‘Value.’ And this ‘V’ often gets lost as pressures to deliver increase.

Weak teams just plod through the roadmap they've been assigned, month after month. And, when something doesn't work—which is often—first they blame it on the stakeholder that requested/demanded the feature and then they try to schedule another iteration on the roadmap, or they suggest a redesign or a different set of features that this time they hope will solve the problem.

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Delete it. The message isn’t important or it requires no response. The simplest action is to get rid of it. If you think it might be important, then you will put the message into an archive folder. Defer it. If a message requires a task that takes 5 or more minutes to complete, then defer it and schedule a date and time when you will do it. One of the main reasons people get bogged down is that they try to take action on emails that require you to complete a lengthy task. For emails like this, it makes sense to estimate the time required, write down the specific action into your calendar, respond back to the recipient with a date when they should expect it and then filter the email into your “Follow-Up” folder. You can use the items on your calendar to schedule the rest of your week. Another option for deferring an item is to use the Boomerang extension, which creates reminders for specific tasks. Delegate it. You may not be the best person to handle the task. If you have a team or subordinates, then delegate the task to the appropriate person. After that, create a reminder in your calendar to follow up and make sure it has been handled. Do it. If it takes less than 5 minutes to respond to an email or complete the required task, then take care of it immediately.

You can predict with nearly 90 percent accuracy which projects will fail—months or years in advance. And now back to our premise. The predictor of success or failure was whether people could hold five specific crucial conversations. For example, could they speak up if they thought the scope and schedule were unrealistic? Or did they go silent when a cross-functional team member began sloughing off? Or even more tricky—what should they do when an executive failed to provide leadership for the effort?

Ask questions, lots of questions Schedule regular 1:1s with your manager. Get to know your team. Actively solicit feedback-don’t wait for it Accept the challenge (i.e., take risks and don’t be afraid to fail … other Googlers will support you). Two weeks later, they received a follow-up email reminding them of the five actions.

H. I. QUESTIONS FOR TEAM LEADERS Are you comfortable with the fact that your team will only be as good as the leadership you provide? Where are you in the process of moving from individual producer to leading through a team? In which of the five key responsibilities of a leader do you excel? Which of the five key responsibilities of a leader need more of your attention? Are you willing to dialogue with your team on these issues so that you can be a better leader for them? Are you flying at the correct altitude for your leadership role? LEADER’S SCORECARD Give yourself a grade (A, B, or C) in the following areas: _____I have made the transition from independent producer to leading through a team. _____I am flying at the right altitude. _____I am intentional in my spiritual life. _____I am intentional in my family life. _____I have intentional growth in my professional life. _____I manage my “dark side.” _____I regularly keep the mission in front of my team. _____I constantly ask questions. _____I regularly take time away to think. _____My team members are in the right seats. _____I provide maximum missional clarity to the team. _____I empower staff rather than control or micromanage them. _____I intentionally mentor/coach my team members (at least monthly). _____I have an intentional plan to develop new leaders. _____Mobilization of resources is high on my list. _____My schedule is designed to allow me to lead with excellence.

Jonathan presented Larry with a product plan that was a manifestation of the gate-based approach at its finest. There were milestones and approvals, priorities, and a two-year plan of what products Google would release and when. It was a masterpiece of textbook thinking. All that remained was for him to receive a rousing round of applause and a pat on the back. Sadly, this was not to be: Larry hated it. “Have you ever seen a scheduled plan that the team beat?” he asked. Um, no. “Have your teams ever delivered better products than what was in the plan?” No again. “Then what’s the point of the plan? It’s holding us back. There must be a better way. Just go talk to the engineers.

With extremely rare exception, the best sales managers we’ve encountered are unconsciously competent scientists. They hold formal meetings with formal agendas on formal schedules. They set rigorous expectations for their salespeople and track progress against those goals with equal rigor. They manage by analysis rather than anecdote and by measurement rather than gut. They are continuous-improvement experts with action plans galore. While their lower-performing peers try to manage with the same artistic flair that served them well as salespeople, high-performing managers adopt a more scientific approach to management that enables them to get consistently higher performance from their team. Salespeople

Despite his harsh criticisms Gates admired programmers and invariably put them in charge of projects, where they could both manage and program. While this double duty was stressful, Gates wanted to avoid a situation in which professional managers, with either no programming experience or out-of-date knowledge, held sway. It was destructive to rely on management pros to run software teams—or the company. They could not distinguish a promising program from a bust or evaluate schedules or product designs. At companies run by professionals, managers almost always came to mistrust their programmers, whom they could neither understand nor control. Gates

Thank you again for downloading this book!  Now that you know the tricks to becoming a strong Pokémon trainer, it’s time to start playing The next step is to catch as many Pokémon as you can. You may want to schedule your hunts to make sure you can manage your time between working and playing. You should also communicate with other active trainers around your area, especially trainers from the same team. Be a part of the community and become stronger. Thank you and good luck!

Yeah Dad. I’m in here.” Curtis laughed. He knew Ruxs could be a little blunt and heavy-tempered, but he was sure his dads trusted him. A few seconds later Ruxs came through the door, quickly taking in the scene in front of him. His dad wasn’t stupid – he was a detective – so surely he could put the pieces together. Curtis tried to give his dad a look that said “please for the love of god, don’t embarrass me.” Ruxs looked over at Genesis. “How’s it going, G-Man?” Curtis mouth dropped open. Oh hell. “Pretty good, Ruxs. Long time no see.” “Yeah it has been a while. It’s a big surprise to see you here with my boy,” Ruxs said eyeing him carefully. “Dad,” Curtis hissed. Boy? Really? Ruxs ignored him, maintaining his glaring eye contact with Genesis. “Your team’s off to a damn good start this season. That Florida game was close. Y’all got a tough schedule this year.” Genesis sat forward but didn’t stand. “I’m up for the challenge.” “I bet you are.” “Dad.” Curtis scowled again. “You just here for the weekend, Genesis? I would think the coach would have y’all on a pretty tight curfew.” “I got a weekend pass,” Genesis answered with an easy smile. “So you’ll be leaving soon, right?” “Dad. Genesis was at the funeral. Did you know that?” Ruxs tilted his head in question. “Really. No I didn’t realize. All I saw were a bunch of grown. Ass. Men. I must didn’t distinguish.” Curtis’ eyes bugged out of his head. When he looked at Genesis, he didn’t seem fazed. But he on the other hand was humiliated. “I will be leaving tonight. I just came down to show my support. But I’ll be back next week for Thanksgiving break and I’d like to take Curtis on a date, if it’s alright with —” “Hell no,” Ruxs said, not letting Genesis finish. Green walked in before Curtis could say a word. “There you are, Curtis. I was wondering where you’d disappeared…” Green stopped, noticing Ruxs and Genesis’ stare off. “Oh.” Curtis turned to Genesis. “You want to go out with me? I’d like that.” “You can like it all you want,” Ruxs butted in. Curtis gave his dad his most angry look. “I’m not some sixteen year old debutant. What the heck has gotten into you?” “Curtis your grandma is leaving, she wants to say goodbye to you. Why don’t you go on downstairs,” Green said, stepping aside. “We’re gonna talk to Genesis.” Curtis was reluctant to leave, but he did. This was beyond embarrassing. He was almost eighteen. Almost grown. About to graduate and go off to college. He wasn’t even a virgin. Why were they acting like this? Curtis had been on dates. He’d had a steady boyfriend his whole sophomore and junior year, now here they were behaving like they were protecting his untainted virtue.

In the lean enterprise, Sales and Production Scheduling are core members of the product team, in a position to plan the sales campaign as the product design is being developed and to sell with a clear eye to the capabilities of the production system so that both orders and the product can flow smoothly from sale to delivery.

So training smart, training effectively, involves cycling through the three zones in any given week or training block: 75 percent easy running, 5 to 10 percent running at target race paces, and 15 to 20 percent fast running or hill training in the third zone to spike the heart and breathing rates. In my 5-days-a-week running schedule, that cycle looks like this: On Monday, I cross-train. Tuesday, I do an easy run in zone one, then speed up to a target race pace for a mile or two of zone-two work. On Wednesday, it’s an easy zone-one run. Thursday is an intense third-zone workout with hills, speed intervals, or a combination of the two. Friday is a recovery day to give my body time to adapt. On Saturday, I do a relaxed run with perhaps another mile or two of zone-two race pace or zone-three speed. Sunday is a long, slow run. That constant cycling through the three zones—a hard day followed by an easy or rest day—gradually improves my performance in each zone and my overall fitness. But today is not about training. It’s about cranking up that treadmill yet again, pushing me to run ever faster in the third zone, so Vescovi can measure my max HR and my max VO2, the greatest amount of oxygen my heart and lungs can pump to muscles working at their peak. When I pass into this third zone, Vescovi and his team start cheering: “Great job!” “Awesome!” “Nice work.” They sound impressed. And when I am in the moment of running rather than watching myself later on film, I really think I am impressing them, that I am lighting up the computer screen with numbers they have rarely seen from a middle-aged marathoner, maybe even from an Olympian in her prime. It’s not impossible: A test of male endurance athletes in Sweden, all over the age of 80 and having 50 years of consistent training for cross-country skiing, found they had relative max VO2 values (“relative” because the person’s weight was included in the calculation) comparable to those of men half their age and 80 percent higher than their sedentary cohorts. And I am going for a high max VO2. I am hauling in air. I am running well over what should be my max HR of 170 (according to that oft-used mathematical formula, 220 − age) and way over the 162 calculated using the Gulati formula, which is considered to be more accurate for women (0.88 × age, the result of which is then subtracted from 206). Those mathematical formulas simply can’t account for individual variables and fitness levels. A more accurate way to measure max HR, other than the test I’m in the middle of, is to strap on a heart rate monitor and run four laps at a 400-meter track, starting out at a moderate pace and running faster on each lap, then running the last one full out. That should spike your heart into its maximum range. My high max HR is not surprising, since endurance runners usually develop both a higher maximum rate at peak effort and a lower rate at rest than unconditioned people. What is surprising is that as the treadmill

Organizer—Using work breakdown, estimating, and scheduling techniques, determines the complete work effort for the project, the proper sequence of the work activities, when the work will be accomplished, who will do the work, and how much the work will cost. • Point Man—Serves as the central point-of-contact for all oral and written project communications. • Quartermaster—Ensures the project has the resources, materials, and facilities its needs when it needs it. • Facilitator—Ensures that stakeholders and team members who come from different perspectives understand each other and work together to accomplish the project goals. • Persuader—Gains agreement from the stakeholders on project definition, success criteria, and approach; manages stakeholder expectations throughout the project while managing the competing demands of time, cost, and quality; and gains agreement on resource decisions and issue resolution action steps. • Problem Solver—Utilizes root-cause analysis process experience, prior project experiences, and technical knowledge to resolve unforeseen technical issues and to take any necessary corrective actions. • Umbrella—Works to shield the project team from the politics and “noise” surrounding the project, so they can stay focused and productive. • Coach—Determines and communicates the role each team member plays and the importance of that role to the project success, finds ways to motivate each team member, looks for ways to improve the skills of each team member, and provides constructive and timely feedback on individual performances. • Bulldog—Performs the follow-up to ensure that commitments are maintained, issues are resolved, and action items are completed. • Librarian—Manages all information, communications, and documentation involved in the project.

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

Leadership as a Service But the best leadership—the kind that people can mention only with evident emotion and deep respect—is most often exercised by people without positional power. It happens outside the official hierarchy of delegated authority. When I’m on my home turf, I play tennis two or three times a week in groups organized by a charming fellow named Mike. Mike is our leader. It’s Mike who decides the matchups: who plays with whom and against whom. He’s the one who shuffles the players (16 of us on four courts) after each set so we all have different partners for all three sets. He invariably makes good pairings so that near the end of a half hour you can look across the courts and see four scores like 5 to 4, 6 to 6, 7 to 6, and 5 to 5. He has a great booming voice, easy to hear even when he is three courts away. He sets the meeting times, negotiates the schedules for court time, and makes sure there are subs for anyone who needs to be away. Nobody gave Mike the job of leading the group; he just stepped up and took it. His leadership is uncontested; the rest of us are just in awe of our good fortune that he leads us as he does. He gets nothing for it except our gratitude and esteem. —TDM In this example, leadership is not about extracting anything from us; it’s about service. The leadership that the Mikes of the world provide enables their endeavors to go forth. While they sometimes set explicit directions, their main role is that of a catalyst, not a director. They make it possible for the magic to happen. In order to lead without positional authority—without anyone ever appointing you leader—you have to do what Mike does: • Step up to the task. • Be evidently fit for the task. • Prepare for the task by doing the required homework ahead of time. • Maximize value to everyone. • Do it all with humor and obvious goodwill. It also helps to have charisma.

Also, you may want to consider having each potential fresh meat fill out a questionnaire to consider their commitment prior to accepting them into your training program. Sample questions may include: 1. Have you ever participated in a team sport? 2. Why do you want to train in roller derby? 3. Do you have aspirations to join a team? 4. Can you attend x% of the following practice schedule (list dates/locations/times)? 5. Will you be committed to personal and athletic growth within your training? 6. Will you be committed to pushing yourself when training gets tough? 7. Can you be comfortable with failing your way to success?

Manage Your Team’s Collective Time Time management is a group endeavor. The payoff goes far beyond morale and retention. ILLUSTRATION: JAMES JOYCE by Leslie Perlow | 1461 words Most professionals approach time management the wrong way. People who fall behind at work are seen to be personally failing—just as people who give up on diet or exercise plans are seen to be lacking self-control or discipline. In response, countless time management experts focus on individual habits, much as self-help coaches do. They offer advice about such things as keeping better to-do lists, not checking e-mail incessantly, and not procrastinating. Of course, we could all do a better job managing our time. But in the modern workplace, with its emphasis on connectivity and collaboration, the real problem is not how individuals manage their own time. It’s how we manage our collective time—how we work together to get the job done. Here is where the true opportunity for productivity gains lies. Nearly a decade ago I began working with a team at the Boston Consulting Group to implement what may sound like a modest innovation: persuading each member to designate and spend one weeknight out of the office and completely unplugged from work. The intervention was aimed at improving quality of life in an industry that’s notorious for long hours and a 24/7 culture. The early returns were positive; the initiative was expanded to four teams of consultants, and then to 10. The results, which I described in a 2009 HBR article, “Making Time Off Predictable—and Required,” and in a 2012 book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone , were profound. Consultants on teams with mandatory time off had higher job satisfaction and a better work/life balance, and they felt they were learning more on the job. It’s no surprise, then, that BCG has continued to expand the program: As of this spring, it has been implemented on thousands of teams in 77 offices in 40 countries. During the five years since I first reported on this work, I have introduced similar time-based interventions at a range of companies—and I have come to appreciate the true power of those interventions. They put the ownership of how a team works into the hands of team members, who are empowered and incentivized to optimize their collective time. As a result, teams collaborate better. They streamline their work. They meet deadlines. They are more productive and efficient. Teams that set a goal of structured time off—and, crucially, meet regularly to discuss how they’ll work together to ensure that every member takes it—have more open dialogue, engage in more experimentation and innovation, and ultimately function better. CREATING “ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY” DAYS One of the insights driving this work is the realization that many teams stick to tried-and-true processes that, although familiar, are often inefficient. Even companies that create innovative products rarely innovate when it comes to process. This realization came to the fore when I studied three teams of software engineers working for the same company in different cultural contexts. The teams had the same assignments and produced the same amount of work, but they used very different methods. One, in Shenzen, had a hub-and-spokes org chart—a project manager maintained control and assigned the work. Another, in Bangalore, was self-managed and specialized, and it assigned work according to technical expertise. The third, in Budapest, had the strongest sense of being a team; its members were the most versatile and interchangeable. Although, as noted, the end products were the same, the teams’ varying approaches yielded different results. For example, the hub-and-spokes team worked fewer hours than the others, while the most versatile team had much greater flexibility and control over its schedule. The teams were completely unaware that their counterparts elsewhere in the world were managing their work differently. My research provide

With an accelerated schedule of launch in just two months, NASA and contractor launch and support teams labor steadily with six-day work weeks by day and night shifts

All of this highlights one of the most challenging obstacles that prevents teams from taking the time to work on how they work together: adrenaline addiction. Many if not most of the executives and managers I know have become so hooked on the rush of urgent demands and out-of-control schedules that the prospect of slowing down to review, think, talk, and develop themselves is too anxiety-inducing to consider. Of course, this is exactly what they need, which is what addiction is all about—doing things that are bad for you even when confronted with evidence that they are, well, bad for you.

But you did something stupid.” “What makes you think that?” I grumble. “Because you have testicles.” She throws up her hands. She picks up the salad bowl and stares into it. “What happened to all the carrots?” she asks. Matt barks out a laugh. “So what did you do?” Sky asks, and then she digs until she finds a carrot and pops it into her mouth. “I overstepped,” I say quietly. Sky looks at Matt and arches a brow. He gives her a subtle nod. “Is this about one little secret?” She points to her belly. I shake my head. “I don’t care that she’s pregnant.” Well, I care because I kind of wish the kid were mine. But that’s the only reason. “Who’s pregnant?” Seth asks as he comes into the room and takes out a bottle of water. Matt grins at him. “As long as it’s not you, I don’t care.” Seth rolls his eyes and walks back to the living room. “So it wasn’t about the surrogacy…” Sky prods. I shake my head. “It’s about something else. And I kind of stuck my nose in where it didn’t belong. But she really needed for it to be done.” “Maybe she wanted it done on her own schedule,” Sky says softly. “Now she’s mad at me, and I don’t even know where she went.” Matt jerks a spatula toward the door. “Go see if you can fix it. We’ll let Hayley play with Sky’s belly for a while.” Sky grins and shakes her head. “Something about twins,” she says. I get up and push my chair in. “I won’t be gone too long,” I say. “You sure you don’t mind?” Like they need another kid. “What’s one more?” Sky says. She waves a breezy hand around. “After a while, you just stop counting them. One of them will scream when they want something. Or when someone is bleeding. It all works out.” “Mine’s blond,” I say. “She’ll stick out in your crowd.” For now at least. “Oh, good to know. Maybe we’ll feed that one.” Sky looks at Matt and nods. “Look for the one with yellow hair. Feed it. We got this.” She claps her hands together like she’s coaching a team. I laugh. They’re just too damn cute together.

If we’re struggling with trust issues, it means we made a poor hiring decision. If a team member isn’t producing good results or can’t manage their own schedule and workload, we aren’t going to continue to work with that person. It’s as simple as that. We employ team members who are skilled professionals, capable of managing their own schedules and making a valuable contribution to the organization. We have no desire to be babysitters during the day.” That

...downside of the team approach is that there may be a conflict between the schedules of your senior attorneys and you. If the senior attorneys on the team prefer to stay late and work late, you’ll have to match your schedule to theirs. If they like to work early and leave early, you’ll be expected to do the same – because if work schedule differences arise, they’ll be resolved in favor of the more senior attorneys, not you.

the school leadership team should specifically: • Build consensus for the school’s mission of collective responsibility • Create a master schedule that provides sufficient time for team collaboration, core instruction, supplemental interventions, and intensive interventions • Coordinate schoolwide human resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including the site counselor, psychologist, speech and language pathologist, special education teacher, librarian, health services, subject specialists, instructional aides, and other classified staff • Allocate the school’s fiscal resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including school categorical funding • Assist with articulating essential learning outcomes across grade levels and subjects • Lead the school’s universal screening efforts to identify students in need of Tier 3 intensive interventions before they fail • Lead the school’s efforts at Tier 1 for schoolwide behavior expectations, including attendance policies and awards and recognitions (the team may create a separate behavior team to oversee these behavioral policies) • Ensure that all students have access to grade-level core instruction • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 2 interventions for students in need of supplemental support in motivation, attendance, and behavior • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 3 interventions for students in need of intensive support in the universal skills of reading, writing, number sense, English language, motivation, attendance, and behavior • Continually monitor schoolwide evidence of student learning

However, we must remind everyone that improvement of daily work is more important than daily work itself, and that all teams must have dedicated capacity for this (e.g., reserving 20% of all cycles for improvement work, scheduling one day per week or one week per month, etc.). Without doing this, the productivity of the team will almost certainly grind to a halt under the weight of its own technical and process debt.

Apple may not do customer research to decide what products to make, but it absolutely pays attention to how customers use its products. So the marketing team working on the iMovie HD release scheduled for Macworld, on January 11, 2005, decided to shoot a wedding. The ceremony it filmed was gorgeous: a sophisticated, candlelit affair at the Officers’ Club of San Francisco’s Presidio. The bride was an Apple employee, and the wedding was real. There was one problem with the footage, however. Steve Jobs didn’t like it. He watched it the week before Christmas, recalled Alessandra Ghini, the marketing executive managing the launch of iLife. Jobs declared that the San Francisco wedding didn’t capture the right atmosphere to demonstrate what amateurs could do with iMovie. “He told us he wanted a wedding on the beach, in Hawaii, or some tropical location,” said Ghini. “We had a few weeks to find a wedding on a beach and to get it shot, edited, and approved by Steve. The tight time frame allowed for no margin for error.” With time short and money effectively no object, the team went into action. It contacted Los Angeles talent agencies as well as hotels in Hawaii to learn if they knew of any weddings planned—preferably featuring an attractive bride and groom—over the New Year’s holiday. They hit pay dirt in Hollywood: A gorgeous agency client and her attractive fiancé were in fact planning to wed on Maui during the holiday. Apple offered to pay for the bride’s flowers, to film the wedding, and to provide the couple with a video. In return, Apple wanted rights for up to a minute’s worth of footage of its choosing.

As for employees working at organizations who treat all people the same way, it will be up to you to push for the things you value: the balance of vacation time versus pay, a flexible schedule, the way your role within the company works. If you’re a manager, make a list of the cognitive strengths of your team. Some of your employees may be great at memorizing things. Others may be better at quantitative tasks. Some have good people skills. Some don’t. Assigning work projects based on an employee’s strengths may be critical to your group’s productivity. You may discover you had a Michael Jordan on your team but couldn’t see it because you were only asking him to play baseball.

As a manager, my attention is similarly drawn toward the problem spots. I’m usually focused on the designs that aren’t quite there, the projects that are slipping behind schedule, or the teams that have hiring needs.

Will, you’ll help out right?” “Well… I’ll have to look at my schedule, I’m quite busy you know.” Jenna scoffs from the armchair and Will looks at her. “The only thing you’re busy with is finding a divorce lawyer, this is a crisis, William, be a team player.” Fine, I’ll help, but only because it’s for Tessa. I’d tell you to get bent if it was for either of you. Now, let’s talk menu while Gabe makes us all breakfast.

Once your objective is clear, you need to communicate it to your audience. What exactly do you want them to do next? Do they visit your website to request a free sample? Do they schedule a call with someone from your team? Do they download a free resource? You need a very clear call to action—not something wimpy and vague like “don’t hesitate to call us.

LOW: Sales Effort Sales effort is a measure of the length of your sales cycle and includes the number of touch points required to make the sale. Where CAC measures the amount of money you’re spending to get a new customer, sales effort measures the time and energy you’re spending. The best way to track sales effort is to look at both the average number of days from someone scheduling their first demo to closing and the number of calls it takes to close a deal. Your ability to keep sales effort low depends greatly on your industry and customer base. If you’re doing enterprise sales, your sales cycle will be long and require more effort than if you’re targeting solopreneurs and other small businesses with a single decision-maker. A three- or four-month sales cycle is reasonable in enterprise sales—and worth it because the ACV might be $50,000. If you’re spending that much time for $5,000 contracts, though, that’s rough. No matter what your sales process looks like, you want your sales effort to be as low as possible. Here are some ways to lower this number. Self-Serve Sign-up and Onboarding. Many inexpensive products can get away with low price points because they have a low-touch or no-touch sales process. They have a self-serve sign-up and onboarding process, which requires almost no sales effort. The higher your ARPA, the less likely they are to become customers without some sales effort. But finding places to offer self-service along the journey can reduce the amount of hand-holding your team has to do while making the process speedier for your customer. One-Call Close. Self-service isn’t going to work in a lot of spaces, but you can try to get to a point where the decision is made by a single person. You can do this by targeting a founder, a developer, or a single manager. You can also streamline the back-and-forth of providing more sales materials, getting on second calls, waiting for input from the committee—and on and on. Educate your customers as much as you can ahead of time so they have the information they need and develop checklists to gather the information you need to close the deal quickly.

raising funding also has the potential to save you years. As Craig Hewett, the founder of Castos, told me, funding allows you to “live in the future” by making investments you otherwise would have had to wait for. When Craig Hewett raised money for Castos, he spent it on hiring senior sales and development team members rather than the juniors many startups are forced to hire because of a lack of cash. This allowed Castos to make progress fast. Ruben Gamez, the founder of SignWell, used funding to invest in compliance (SOC2 Type 2 and HIPAA). They would have done so eventually, but they wouldn’t have been able to afford it until later. This investment allowed them to start closing major deals sooner and grow faster. Strategic hiring can be another way to spend funds. Jordan Gal, the founder of Rally, hired a chief of staff almost from day one. He told me, “Money allows you to hire in such a way that you, as the founder, can focus on whatever your superpower is, with far fewer distractions than when bootstrapped.” Derrick Reimer of SavvyCal burst into a crowded scheduling space by investing funds into SEO and marketing earlier than he would have been able to if he was purely bootstrapped. This potentially shaved a year or more off his marketing efforts. Those are just a few of the ways funding can help when applied strategically.

Finding the right lawyer is crucial when you're hurt in Tuscaloosa because of someone else's mistake. Krebs Law, LLC specializes in helping people like you. We understand the stress and pain an injury can bring and are here to guide you through every step. Our law firm's Tuscaloosa personal injury attorneys have extensive experience with personal injury claims. Now, we can fight for you as well. Learn more about personal injury cases below. Then, schedule your free consultation with a Tuscaloosa personal injury attorney from our team.

Raskin was just a dreamer, whereas he was a doer and would get the Mac done in a year. It was clear he wanted vindication for having been ousted from the Lisa group, and he was energized by competition. He publicly bet John Couch $5,000 that the Mac would ship before the Lisa. “We can make a computer that’s cheaper and better than the Lisa, and get it out first,” he told the team. Jobs asserted his control of the group by canceling a brown-bag lunch seminar that Raskin was scheduled to give to the whole company in February 1981. Raskin happened to go by the room anyway and discovered that there were a hundred people there waiting to hear him;

Good teams are skilled in the many techniques to rapidly try out product ideas to determine which ones are truly worth building. Bad teams hold meetings to generate prioritized roadmaps. Good teams love to have brainstorming discussions with smart thought leaders from across the company. Bad teams get offended when someone outside their team dares to suggest they do something. Good teams have product, design, and engineering sit side by side, and they embrace the give and take between the functionality, the user experience, and the enabling technology. Bad teams sit in their respective silos, and ask that others make requests for their services in the form of documents and scheduling meetings. Good teams are constantly trying out new ideas to innovate, but doing so in ways that protect the revenue and protect the brand. Bad teams are still waiting for permission to run a test. Good teams insist they have the skill sets on their team, such as strong product design, necessary to create winning products. Bad teams don't even know what product designers are. Good teams ensure that their engineers have time to try out the prototypes in discovery every day so that they can contribute their thoughts on how to make the product

IT’S NOT THAT my seventy-two-year-old father-in-law is actually going deaf, it’s that he’s a, in my former mother-in-law’s words, “lazy-ass listener.” I say “former” for her because she passed three years ago, kind of right on schedule as far as I’m concerned, but my wife Sheila’s still kind of torn up…not so much about her mom being gone, her insides chewed up, bubbling up red down her chin, as that the two of them never made up proper before she went. Which, again: nothing all that surprising, this is the way things go about 99 percent of the time between moms and daughters, as far as I can tell. Either way, the result of all this is that, with his wife gone, Sheila’s dad’s been kind of letting their apartment go to hell. Crusty dishes tottering on every flat surface, newspapers and engineering journals stacking up into fire hazard after fire hazard, the whole place an ashtray, pretty much. So, to pick up her dead mom’s slack—though it’s also her two brothers’ slack if you ask me—Sheila commits to cleaning her dad’s place up one Sunday. I offer to help, of course, it’s what you do when you’re married, when you’re shouldering burdens together, when it’s a team effort, and then it turns out that the best way I can help out is by ushering her father out of the apartment for the afternoon.

The first of those, the preliminary design review, or PDR, usually takes place about four years, sometimes more, before the scheduled launch. The team has to convince the review board that it has solid concepts for all major aspects of the mission.