Category Archives: Leadership

Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both

August 24, 2011
Business, Leadership, Platforms, Startups, Technology & Execution
9 Comments

If you think the thing you are building is both an “app” and a “platform” you will fail. Oh, and if you think it’s going to be a just a platform, you will fail too. (Update: April 6, 2012 – I updated this post with some typo fixes and minor tweaks). A recent story on Hacker News gave me an excuse to write down my thoughts on this subject. I’m reposting here in order to …Continue reading →

90% of the Decisions You Make Don’t Matter

August 6, 2011
Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Startups
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In my post The 5 Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor, I noted that “90% of the decisions you make don’t matter; real success comes in being able to identify the 10% that do and focus on those.” The best, most effective leaders can free their teams up to get stuff done by making lots of decisions quickly and enabling those decisions to stick. We all regularly hear criticisms of ineffective leadership voiced as “Decisions …Continue reading →

Some of my Favorite Quotes

June 20, 2011
Books, Leadership
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“A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others.” – Hans Selye “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.” – Alan Perlis “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus “No matter where you go, there you are.” – BB …Continue reading →

The 5Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor

June 14, 2011
Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Startups
16 Comments

Always have a plan. Always. A great, simple, framework for any plan is the 5Ps:  Purpose, Principles, Priorities, People, and Plan. This framework applies to software development projects, job searches, building a garden, or a phase in your life. I have personally found the 5Ps a useful tool for small projects (e.g. prepping for a VC demo/presentation) as well as large-scale projects that include 1,000s of people. The 5Ps : Purpose, Principles, Priorities, People, and …Continue reading →

A great quote

January 12, 2007
Leadership, Smart Home
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Someone just forwarded me the following quote. This really resonates with me. I have been working on trying to get a home server product built at Microsoft for over 8 years… “At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done …Continue reading →

Technology Complexity

April 2, 2004
Technology & Execution
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Mostly when I read Don Box’s blog I say to myself “Hmmm, interesting. I didn’t know that. I wonder how long his hair is these days?” What he’s working on (Indigo) is interesting to me (it was my former life), but it’s not where my passion currently lies. Today Don posted a piece as a response to Eric Raymond’s article on software usability. I hadn’t read Eric’s article, but after I did (and John Gruber’s analysis …Continue reading →

Heros

November 25, 2003
Leadership
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Speaking of heros… This got me thinking about who my heros are. I actually have quite a few, and I think I can categorize them: Real Life My father. Duh. Geeks Jim Gray Ray Ozzie Anders Hieldberg Chris Guzak Leadership Bob Muglia Ronald Regan Abrhahm Lincoln

Ray Ozzie on WinFS & Longhorn

November 25, 2003
Coding, Leadership, Uncategorized
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One of my favorite industry visionaries, Ray Ozzie, has written a great note in his blog on WinFS titled “640KB ought to be enough for everyone“. Interesting read. He references Jim Gray (another of my geek heros) and points to an old but topical presentation on the trends in storage. Jim gets it.