Book Notes: The Hard Things About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers offers advice on sticky business situations. His past experience, good and bad, is served up for your benefit. The writing is crisp, direct and eschews simple answers. When you inevitably find yourself in complex, difficult to manage situations, …

Explore Pixar‘s Relationship with Their Customers

Ed Catmull, CEO of Pixar, was asked to comment on kids as consumers. Specifically, the question asked about Pixar’s views on the trends they see amongst their five-year-old demographic (skip to the 24:10 mark in the video). His answer: Five year olds actually haven’t changed as much. Clearly, the teenage world has changed a lot more …

Book Review of Remote: Office Not Required

I read Remote: Office Not Required over the weekend (it’s a fast read) to see what I could learn about working with remotely located coworkers. I came away with a simple change of perception that will likely change the way I operate in the future. Our company has two offices which, in a sense, makes us a …

Elevate your understanding of the Jobs-to-be-Done Four Forces Diagram

“Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Product Adoption” by John T. Gourville provides support and context to better understand The Rewired Group’s Four Progress Making Forces Diagram. In particular, the article provides context for the push and pull concepts within the four forces diagram outlined below (and includes some of Clayton Christensen’s …

Change and the Habit of the Present

Christina Wodtke gave some needed depth to an old cliché: people don’t like change. Whether or not change is adopted, she argues, is not determined by a simplistic and innate dislike for new things. It’s determined by how well the change is communicated and how smoothly people transition to it. Wodtke writes: “…when a big …