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Here’s a question that sometimes confounds supervisors and HR departments alike: Is there a difference between a high-potential employee and a high-performance employee?

The answer is yes, and confusing one with the other is apt to lead to some some poor promotion decisions down the road. It also could deny a business the full benefit of having truly high-potential workers on its staff.

A high performer is easy to spot, clearly excelling at whatever job he or she currently fills. But as the Peter Principle observed several decades ago, there is a tendency in business to serially promote competent people until they reach their level of incompetence. Thus, an asset can become a liability.

High-potential employees are not simply good at what ...

Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.

The below video is the first part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity and critical thinking. Find out what she has to say:

Before you make a few modifications to your same, old, boring presentation and click “Save As” thinking you’re ready to go…think again. Take a step back and take an empathetic approach to your delivery of information. When creating a prese...

In my last blog post, I spoke about siloed content caused by silos within an enterprise. Moreover, about the guy who is on the hook to drive the business, generate leads and protect the brand. In most organizations they call him the Chief Marketing Officer or CMO. He is focused on the connected, consistent customer journey.

Yeah, this feels like herding cats — an attempt to control or organize a class of entities which are uncontrollable or chaotic.

Because in a larger organizations, everyone creates content. Sometimes people do not even know that this content ends up being customer facing. Some folks in Support writing some messages in support systems — but is it necessarily on brand and on target?

Let’s break down the customer journey — ...

This is a bit of a different piece of content for me. In his brilliant book “The Tipping Point” Malcolm Gladwell defines 3 archetypes of people – Salesmen, Connectors and Mavens.

Though I see a bit of all 3 in me, relentless Maven. According to Gladwell, Mavens are “information specialists”, or “people we rely upon to connect us with new information.” He goes on to say: “Mavens are really information brokers, sharing and trading what they know.”

When I discover great things it’s hard for me not to share it with others. I simply can’t help myself. When a company has done such great work developing a product that it becomes an integral part of my work life (or personal life) they deserve to have others know about it.

We all lead busy lives, ...

Continuing in Phase One of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

• Part 1 - Startup Bootstrapping

• Part 2 - Debt as Startup Capital ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 3 - Equity Funding for Startups

• Part 4 - Convertible Debt

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let's dive in!

Debt is the most common form of outside capital for new small business owners. While angel investors and venture capitalists get all the big headlines for funding exciting companies, it’s the debt providers that are behind most of the investment dollars that go into the 99% of companies that aren’t splashed across magazine covers and business websites. SBA Loans, Personal Loans to the business owner, merchant cash ad...

There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult. — Rainer Maria Rilke

In 1929 a collection of ten letters was published under the title “Letters to a Young Poet”, written by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, a 19-year-old officer cadet. The young officer had written Rilke a letter asking for guidance and they corresponded — the two never met in person. In this piece are “double-quoted” extracts from Rilke’s letters.

An American invention

When the great business thinker Peter Drucker wrote that the “CEO” title was “an American invention”, he was referring to this label in the organizational charts of large corporations. What’s odd about this title in start...

When things are going well, everyone wants to take credit. When things are going poorly, everyone wants to point a finger elsewhere.

While startups don't have any monopoly on finger pointing and blame shifting in an organization, we deal with this way more as startup Founders because let's face it, stuff goes wrong all the time!

But if we know going in that problems are going to be rampant, it's as important as ever to build a culture of accountability in our startups so that everyone is 100% focused on driving outcomes.

Accountability Drives Motivation

It's impossible for our team to be truly invested in the outcomes of success (or failure) if we don't believe we're accountable. As an employee, if I work really hard, or very little, and I...

If you are one of those people who consumes every bit of Silicon Valley management science you can find, you will be familiar with Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. If you aren’t — for some reason — his writing will be a breath of fresh air, compared to the rest.

Horowitz was a little known figure for most of his time in the Valley, until his blog, swagger, swearing, and love of hip hop made him one of the most entertaining smack talkers and truth talkers in our industry.

Here’s how he got his start:

Sarah Lacy: How did you first get involved in Silicon Valley?

Ben Horowitz: I was actually a student at Columbia in New York. I got a summer internship at Silicon Graphics, and I had no idea what Silico...

Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy Duarte is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.

The below video is the fifth part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity and critical thinking. Find out what she has to say:

As an entrepreneur and founder of a startup, you already know you can do a lot of things well. You’re the head under many hats; the go-to guy or gal for a plethora of issues.

Nancy agrees with you. Entrepreneurial-minded people see n...

“Sometimes your spidey sense is like, ‘I don’t know if either one of these are right,’ but you have to go somewhere. Spinning your wheels, being in neutral? That’s bad.”

When you hear Founders out in the media talking about their product, most of what you hear them talk about is all the things that went right: the hypotheses that were confirmed, the “ahah” moments where all the pieces fell into place.

Founders Don’t Discuss The things they didn’t know

What you don’t hear most Founders talking about: all the things they didn’t know – the times a big bet didn’t pay off, the times when what you thought was true turned out not to be the case, the times when the market turned on a dime and suddenly everything you’d been working to build was no l...