I travel frequently, visiting our delivery centers in Romania, Argentina, and India as well as other locations throughout the world and country. I actually enjoy travel itself, though being away from Teresa and the kids is tough. I’m always ready to get back home.
Each time I go somewhere, I seem to learn interesting tidbits about the country, culture, or even life. Here’s what I learned while in Argentina. Continue Reading…
One of the worst pieces of advice I received in the early days of Three Pillar was to refrain from building a board of directors. If you need the advice, I was told, build a board of advisors. Conventional wisdom said that I shouldn’t relinquish control. Luckily, I ignored conventional wisdom and did the opposite of what was recommended. I added my first outside director when I had less than $1M in annual revenue. For a bootstrapped company with no outside investment, this was highly unusual.
I credit much of Three Pillar’s success to that decision. It did three things that an advisory board could never have done: Continue Reading…
As a software developer and agile evangelist I used to preach the concept of “failing fast”. Failing is expensive and the better you are at doing it, the more you will minimize it’s impact. In the ideal world, we would never fail. Get over it, this is the real world and you’re likely going to fail at least as often as you succeed.
In the engineering world, a fail-fast system immediately terminates and reports a flawed condition as soon as it is discovered. By Failing fast the failure occurs as close to the core issue as possible. This maximizes feedback (it is provided early and often), allows for contextual information to be captured, and ensures that feedback occurs early and often. As a result, no operations are conducted in a flawed state (waste) and debugging is simplified since it is much easier to pinpoint the failure. Ultimately, failing fast reduces cost while the alternative, continuing in a flawed state and attempting to perform operations that are likely to result in an erroneous outcome, bloats cost.
A while ago I posted “You may not be the ‘A’ player you think you are” describing what makes up a top performer. Charlie Thomas, CEO of Razorsight and author of “Entrepreneur: A CEO’s Lessons in American Capitalism“, commented about the importance of hiring – specifically of hiring people that are better than yourself. I couldn’t agree more – ‘A’ players make themselves better by surrounding themselves with people who are better, smarter, and more experienced than themselves. So what is the secret to identifying and hiring this type of teamate? For me, it’s not the typical recruiting process. Continue Reading…
Last year I posted a Thanksgiving Top Ten. Boy, talk about setting the bar high. Don’t get me wrong, ten is a fine number. It was in 2010 and it still is today. But 10 is a daunting number if you have to repeat it every year. So I’m pruning this year’s list down to 3. I’m still thankful for last year’s top ten, but here are the three things I’m used most thankful for over the past year.
There are times in life when you have to retreat – pull back from your ideal in order to focus on your core responsibilities. Circling the wagons isn’t always the most fun strategic move, in fact, it’s often very difficult both emotionally and by it’s very nature, but it is an essential skill for any leader.
To circle the wagons, you have to know what your core is. There are priorities, and then there are PRIORITIES. What are the priorities in your life that absolutely can not give? What are the responsibilities that must not be delayed when the going gets rough? Thinking through these questions before you really need the answer will accelerate your ability to pull back, stabilize your situation, and circle the wagons. If you’re prepared, you may find that circling the wagons for a period of time might just be one of the most powerful acceleration strategies.
People don’t want to punch a time card and put their heads down and their butts up each day. People want to influence decisions, make choices, solve problems and make a greater impact.
From CMOE via Michael Hyatt
I’m not sure there is any one lesson that my parents stressed more than the importance of integrity when I was growing up. True to the lesson, my father did more than preach integrity, he modeled integrity. Over the course of my career I have realized how few people really understand what integrity is (hint, it’s not simply honesty) and how even fewer people are fortunate enough to been given such a noble example.
Just over a week ago I made the toughest decision I have ever made as CEO of Three Pillar Global. I laid off a handful of employees. Unlike what you may expect, my primary reason wasn’t financial, it was strategic. How could it be strategic to layoff good people? Structure flows from strategy. People fit within structure. We changed our strategy, which ultimately changed our structure.
Thanks for stopping by and for considering me as a speaker for your event. I am honored. Finding the right speaker for an event is not easy. In order to help prequalify whether or not I might be a fit, I have included some infor
View all...© 2013 David DeWolf | Powered by the Standard Theme
