Articles for category: Initiative

Trick or Treat

The Trick – takes seconds to show, but hours, days, weeks, maybe even months to master. The Treat – is a quick ask – can I have something for nothing? The trick can get you a bigger treat than if you just asked because people will always recognize the work that went into it. Or sometimes you’ll get just the treat. You can ask for something and hope you get your worth, or show your value and get it.

6 months ago

Greg Thomas

Planning for Rain Days

Rain will fall on your parade. On the days you had so much planned to do, you anticipated the desire to have no rain fall. Rain will fall. That rain can be people being absent, leaving their jobs, resources drying up, pivots and turns you didn’t plan. The rain will fall, and some days it will be harder than others. You can always plan for it, but will you scream against it, cross your arms, and complain? Or figure out how you can work within what is there?

Idea Nation

You can stare at your screen and hope that inspiration comes at you – strikes you like a lightning bolt, fills you with the energy to move forward, and implement at never-ending speed. And you can wait for that idea that no one has (that you can’t prove that no one has). Or you can start working on what you have in your head now and see where it takes you. It might not become something, it might not garner a billion-dollar valuation, but it might be something that has value to some, and they didn’t know they needed it

Where to Start

When firefighters arrive at a blaze, they assess where to start and begin. Time is of the essence; lives are at stake. I’m sure they get it wrong – misjudge the wind, can’t see all the variables, don’t know about that indoor propane tank, etc, etc – but they have to start somewhere. If given the opportunity to stop time and spend hours and even days determining the proper approach, I’m sure they’d take it. But they can’t, they have to have faith in their team, what they have learned and what they know – and they give their best

Where we Need to Be

I read two types of articles these days; We completed our work within 4 hours and have a new product. I was hired to come in and fix a company’s product and have spent the last 2 weeks making it scale. The answer is in the middle: find the right people who use the right tools, to deliver the right thing somewhere in the middle. The middle is where we all want to be, but it’s not Instagram-worthy enough to get there, so we go with Option 1, but then when 1 breaks, we are forced into 2. Somewhere in