Geeky Leadership Rants by Tig Kindel
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Last week I joined my good friend Den Delimarsky and his colleague Courtny Cotten hosted me on The Work Item podcast. “In this episode, we dive a bit deeper into Charlie’s approach to product ideation and design, discuss … Read more
No, don’t debate excellence; become excellent at debating. “It is better to debate a decision without settling it than settling a decision without debating it.” – Joseph Joubert Vigorous debate is critical to clear thinking in … Read more
Great leaders don’t let changes happen to them. Instead, they become skilled at driving change. Leaders effective in driving change are known as agents of change or change agents. This post documents a tool called D x V x F > R that will enable you to become a great agent of change.
I exited my last role recently and have been drafting my next chapter. I have decided to make my new mission Space; specifically getting humanity off Earth. Over the past months, I’ve focused on learning about … Read more
If you are a UX designer, Software Developer, or Product Manager, and you use placeholder text anywhere but where it’s impossible to know what the content will be (user supplied) then you are doing it wrong. … Read more
Last month I offered “office hours” to anyone who wanted to chat with me. It was an experiment to see a) if interesting people would reach out, b) if I could be useful to these people, … Read more
Jason Hartman recently interviewed me for Authority Magazine. Check it out. Homes Of The Future: “The Future Of Smart Homes” With Charlie Kindel of SnapAV Some quotes: One of the things that really motivates and drives … Read more
kindel.com has been hosted on my home network since 1996. Today, I finally moved it to a modern web platform. This includes migrating an OG Active Server Pages (pre .NET) & SQL Server app I wrote … Read more
Look Back Quotient (LBQ) is a measure of how attractive a car is to the car’s owner. A car with a high LBQ will increase the car owner’s propensity to look back at their car after … Read more
It is well understood that no product is perfect and small issues will always exist. Without an ongoing mechanism to fix those issues, not only do they not get fixed, they pile up. Having a clear … Read more
Kindel’s 3rd Law – Amazon will enter every existing business, channel, and market. If said business, channel, or market doesn’t already exist, Amazon will try to invent it. Tig Kindel – 2019 See also: Kindel’s Law … Read more
Since the dawn of time I’ve considered the PC (and related devices like Macs, printers, etc…) to be part of my smart home. For some reason, most traditional smart home offerings have treated PCs et.al. as … Read more
Mechanisms are complete processes built around a tool, owned by a leader that gets adopted broadly and regularly inspected and improved to ensure things get done, not because everyone has good intentions, but because the mechanism’s elements structurally force the desired behavior. “Good intentions never … Read more
Ever since I started programming on an Apple ][+ in 1981, I’ve had a thing for printing. My earliest apps focused on printing and my first money-making endeavor was “Tapes”, which printed casette tape ‘J-cards’ for … Read more
A Path To Green (PTG) is a clear, crisp, and complete statement describing a team’s plan for getting a project or task from red or yellow status to green. Organizations that routinely deliver results on time hold … Read more
At the 1996 Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) I stood up in front of 8,000 customers and announced what I’d been working on for the previous two years: the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM). On stage, in front of … Read more
I spent some time the last few weekends hacking on a product I first developed in 2004: MCE Controller. MCE Controller lets you control a Windows Home Theater PC (or any PC) over the network. It runs … Read more
If you are discussing a topic with colleagues, it’s almost always better to have a specific conversation instead of a general conversation. General Conversation Specific Conversation “We need to figure out how to scrub all open … Read more
Kindel’s 2nd Law – Companies with subscription-based business models eventually behave in ways hostile to their customers. Charlie Kindel – July 2019 Once a company gets addicted to annuity-based revenue, all it can do is focus … Read more
