Engaging change: six tips for surviving and thriving. The only thing that stays the same in business is change – and with the economy still uncertain, every day presents new challenges and opportunities. How managers adapt to the changing horizon can make the difference between surviving or thriving. In other words, the tried and true may have worked well up until now, but is it the best way to continue? Engaging change is now an item on every company's "to do" list, and employers need these changes to work right away. A while ago I penned a column entitled It's time to rethink the way you think," in which I outlined why most change efforts fail. In that column I cited findings from research psychologist Jeffrey Schwartz and executive coach David Rock, listing three things a company should do to give their change efforts the very best chance of succeeding. Because the recent events on Wall Street are having an impact on Main Street, the need for Focus, Expectation, and Attention Density are greater than ever. 1. 2. 3. 5.
The Power of a Written Individual Development. I’ve always been a strong proponent of the importance of having a written individual development plan (IDP) for leadership development. That is, identifying: - What you want to get better at- How you’re going to do it- When you’re going to do it I have one. I make sure my employees have one. The idea is often met with resistance. There’s some truth to all of these comments. When I conduct workshops on how to develop as a leader, or am coaching a leader, I usually get pretty good buy-in until we get to the point where it’s time to put it in writing. I heard a story that convinced me of the power of having written goals that I often tell to try to get people over this hump. The Harvard Business School Goal Story In the book What They Don't Teach You in the Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack tells a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program.
In that year, the students were asked, "Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them? " Early YouTube Engineer Tells All - GigaOM. When we recently heard about the history of YouTube’s growth strategy from CEO Chad Hurley’s point of view, he described it as “hanging onto a rocket.”
But an engineer’s take is always going to be a bit less rose-colored and a bit more about the terrifying situations you brained your way out of. So we were particularly interested to tune in to a talk at YouTube’s developer conference Thursday by Cuong Do, an early software engineer who’s now manager of the site’s Core Product Engineering group. Do’s talk was titled “Behind the Scenes: A Look Into YouTube’s Infrastructure,” and he didn’t disappoint, with harrowing tales of outages; gory details about the specific languages, architectures, and tools YouTube uses; and a flow-chart level view on the way the site handles uploads and video delivery while undergoing the massive usage it sees on a daily basis. digg “One of the key phrases we had in the early days was ‘These are good problems to have,’” Do said.
Video of Blaine Cook's Scaling Twitter.