Reading Time: 2 minI’ve shared a few times how the trust I have for my team can make my life so much easier. Specifically, if I email any of them with a task or question, I can just let it go and be confident that it will be taken care of (or that they’ll respond with follow-up questions, […]
Business
Blameless Postmortems
Reading Time: < 1 minThe idea of a “postmortem” is something we try to do after every major project. We look back at how things went, be glad about what went well, and work on things to improve for the next one. The key to a solid postmortem, and to leading a solid team, is to focus on the […]
People who do great things are doing them for the first time
Reading Time: < 1 minHaving a fresh perspective on an existing system can be a great thing. With GreenMellen, I attribute part of our success to the fact that Ali and I never worked for another agency before starting ours, so we weren’t saddled with bad practices and messy ideas. Related, this is why we love that fact that […]
What are libraries for?
Reading Time: < 1 minWhat is the purpose of a library? Really, what is it? There are two ways to look at it: While the two are similar in practice, the philosophy behind each is very different. In Seth Godin’s famous “Stop Stealing Dreams” article (which you should think of a free two-hour book, not just a super long […]
The WordPress drama shows why WordPress remains the best choice
Reading Time: 2 minOver the last few months, the WordPress community has been a bit of a mess. The short version of the “mess” is that Matt Mullenweg (the man behind WordPress) is not happy with WP Engine (a major host of WordPress sites) and it’s causing a lot of fallout. My friend Aaron has a great timeline […]
When preventing the Osborne Effect hurts
Reading Time: 2 minBack in 1983, the Osborne Computer was selling relatively well when the founder of the company announced plans for the next version of the machine that would be coming out in the next year or so. The new one would be much better, so people stopped buying the current version and the company went bankrupt […]
The Yellow List
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve mentioned before that we use the EOS / Traction model in our agency, and it’s been awesome. There are a lot of great pieces that we’ve implemented from it, but one of my favorites is the concept of the “IDS List” (Identify, Discuss, Solve). In short, it’s a place to leave ideas until a […]
Throw a jacket on your calendar
Reading Time: 2 minSomething I’ve tried to do over the years, with marginal success, is to schedule more white space on my calendar. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive (isn’t “white space” the opposite of “scheduling”?), but it’s often the only way to make it happen. In recently reading Juliet Funt’s book “A Minute to Think“, she had a great […]
Ruining a good thing by trying too hard
Reading Time: 2 minI remember back in elementary school we had an assignment to draw a map of a fictional city. I worked hard on mine, and it was great! However, I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I kept adding more and more stuff to it until it was a huge mess. Trying too hard created a […]
Using cash is expensive
Reading Time: < 1 minI recently listened a the long episode about Visa on the Acquired podcast, and it was fantastic. Visa is one of those companies that we all think we know, but it’s really quite confusing. From the show: Visa does not extend credit. They do not issue cards. They do not work directly with merchants. They […]