If you’ve ever worked with someone who is more on the abrasive side, you probably know how unpleasant it can make business. The truth is when it comes to the people you work with everyday, it’s important to be a great person to work with. This doesn’t mean not speaking your mind, but it means doing so in a way that doesn’t step on toes. A pleasure doing business with you – carries more weight than we might often think.
Archive for category openinsights
Our 64th newsletter issue is just out. In it we discuss different perspectives, and how they shape what we value as important. Understanding how each person, each client, each party at the table sees things, and values things differently is the first step in being able to deliver and speak directly to their needs.
Everyone has experienced the phenomenon of dealing with their savings or checking account banks. When they deposit a check, the bank is quick to credit, while when they write a check, they are slow to debit. This is a phenomenon of accounting, ie take in money as quickly as possible, but dole it out as slowly as possible. At root it is at the heart of cash flow. In this month’s newsletter we discuss some of the challenges inherent in business as belts are tightened and budgets constrict.
In our last newsletter of the decade we discuss the importance of context. Whether it is in user interface design such as priorities in the iphone and feature development, or the numbering of apartments in a new building complex, the perspective or context within which designers, architects and engineers see things, is often quite different from the day-t0-day experiences of so-called end-users. Stepping into their shoes, and being able to see things from their perspective, ie your customers perspective, is an ever present challenge in business.
In our latest newsletter we discuss what economists are dubbing the “medicine of austerity” aka paying the piper or tightening your belt. And we think that this medicine will surely include open source technologies.
Issue 60 marks our newsletter’s five year anniversary. How time flies!
This month we talk about the very prescient topic of the principal agent problem. If you’ve ever been to the mechanic and wondered about what problem your car really has, and whether the mechanic might be inflating the story to his own advantage, then this issue is for you.
Our newsletter this month hits upon the topic of skills. How often are skills not obvious upon first observation of someone? We illustrate this point first by looking at some martial arts classes and then some resumes!
In our latest newsletter we take a trip to the Brooklyn Flea, and talk with the purveyors not of homemade beer, but homemade beer making equipment. We share some insights at how enthusiasts, technology geeks, open source aficionados and passionate detail oriented folks in many niches share a common trait in common. That of ownership. Owning the details, the skills, and mastery over a topic or area. The proverbial “subject matter expert”.
In this month’s issue we discuss assessing people, and how we determine qualification. In particular we look at skills and compare the to immeasurables like drive, loyalty, and fortitude as factors which are often more difficult to measure, but perhaps more crucial to success.