Author Archives: Ed
How to say “No” and preserve your relationships
In a surprising way, the pandemic has shown me what I valued underneath the technicolor zebra stripe of my google calendar. The connections I have with family and friends. I laughed a year ago when I watched the Portlandia episode “Cancel it” … Continue reading
The Future of Work
I’m getting involved with Zerobase. They are building a 100% private contact tracing app, to preserve our civil liberties AND flatten the curve. It’s exciting, because the speed and self organization of this organization feels different. They have built the … Continue reading
Notes from Sam Harris’ Matt Mullenweg’s New Future of Work
My notes from Sam Harris’ New Future of Work podcast interviewing Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg of wordpress.org. This is a wordpress site, btw. Level 1 – Working Physically together Watching the clock, staying there, bosses to look over someone’s shoulder. … Continue reading
Never Split the Difference Negotiation One Sheet
As I mentioned before, I loved Chris Voss’s book “Never Split the Difference“. So much of life is a negotiation. As an agile coach, I’m trying to get adults to change ingrained behavior. As a parent, I’m trying to influence … Continue reading
Getting More Negotiating One Sheet
I’ll often use this sheet to prepare for negotiation. It’s from Getting More. The most useful concept from this book is the idea that each sides values things differently, and unequally. If you can uncover those, you might be willing … Continue reading
Negotiate as if your life depended on it
Like the Baader Meinhoff Phenomenon, when I read a book about something, I start to see everything as related to that book. I recently read the book Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz, and this book … Continue reading
3 tips for debriefs on your team
My sister’s partner, Adam, recently shared the original Top Gun article that inspired the movie with me. It reminded me of my father. My father was a RIO in the F-14 in the seventies and eighties, and later taught at Top … Continue reading
How to pick a mentor
I would not be where I am today if it were not for a few key people who took time out of their busy schedules to help me in my career. Some of them helped me when I wasn’t even … Continue reading
The 5 coaching kata questions to ask as a manager
To coach someone (or yourself) to learn the Toyota Kata, there are 5 simple questions. 1. What is the target condition? 2. What is the actual condition now?* 3. What obstacles do you think are preventing you from reaching the … Continue reading
Your stance towards learning
In Mike Rother’s Toyota Kata, he describes the approach that managers and executives have towards PDCA as a management system. Quote: “If we assume that at any time anything we have planned may not work as intended, that is, that … Continue reading