Opinion

The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins is a must read for anyone looking to change role in their career. This means not only moving to a new company, but being promoted or even changing career. It details a set of methodologies which, if used, will ensure you succeed by contributing value as fast as possible. The book is a healthy mixture of commentary and practical tools. Early wins … for the win After reading the book, my main takeaway was making early wins. Intuitively, this makes sense but it was useful to see written down. When entering a new role, your boss and team will want to see results and validate their decision to hire. The main way to achieve this will be in your early wins. ...

Effective use of your time can make a real difference to the impact you have. By employing good organisational techniques, you can achieve much more in those valuable hours than otherwise. Following the lessons I learned as a manager , I wanted to run through a couple of methods I use to structure my day both personally and at work. Note that these are methods which work for me. I am not writing this as a golden bullet for all time management. It’s important to understand what works for you and tailor a system accordingly. ...

The next book in my series of reviews is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni . The book focuses on what the author describes as the five dysfunctions which cause teams to underperform. Whilst the book is written from a board level, it’s clear to see how each of these dysfunctions could apply to any level or size of team. In fact as I was reading this book, I often spent time contemplating examples in my day job. The book is written predominantly as a fable meaning there is a narrative to follow. I enjoyed this aspect as it really brought the dysfunctions to life and enabled me to imagine them at work. ...

Following in the same vein as The Hard Thing About Hard Things , I am going to discuss The Lean Startup by Eric Ries . Devised in 2008 by Ries, the Lean methodology aims to put science around becoming an entrepreneur along with fostering an innovation environment. Ries demonstrates his model predominantly through examples of the company he helped to build, IMVU . One of the core tenants of Lean is maximising the value delivered to customers. By achieving maximum value, Lean states you will cut out wastage and ultimately thrive against competition. In order to achieve this, the concept of Validated Learning is introduced. Validated Learning is a process whereby you make assumptions, test and then measure their impact. This process allows you to obtain empirical evidence that your assumptions were indeed correct. ...

Following my review of The Hard Thing About Hard Things , I wanted to discuss The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters . The book focuses on how to change your way of thinking in order to achieve greater confidence, success and general happiness. Although it can sound a bit pop science throughout, the author does have extensive qualifications across various branches of science and medicine. Along with this, he has also worked with some impressive names such as Liverpool FC and the Sky Cycling team. ...

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, written by Ben Horowitz, is a tale about his personal career and lessons learnt. For those that haven’t heard of him, Ben Horowitz is a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was somewhat ahead of his time and is much revered within the community. He now spends most of his time working and investing in tech companies. The book guides you through how he started his career, set up and sold Opsware , and went on to become a venture capitalist. ...

I thought my first post, having been the inspiration for me to start this blog, should be a wrap up of NDC London. This is the second time I have now attended NDC and having moved to Westminster, the setting itself was a lot more majestic than last year’s industrial backdrop of East London. If you’ve not been before, picture 3 days of talks by some of the coding world’s rock stars interspersed with coffee, beer and the occasional Brainfuck . ...