All Cooped Up

A recent friend and co-worker made a tough decision to leave the project and take on a leadership role at a startup.  He was very strong technically and a good leader – a rare combination.  I thought about the challenges he’ll be facing as he starts to build his new team from scratch and it reminded me of when I had to do the same.

I keep this list in my notebook as a reminder to me of what I try to aspire to.

Best of luck Jim!

Teamwork

• Encourages a participative approach to work, fostering cooperation, pride, dialogue and trust.
• Creates strong spirit and morale.
• Let’s people finish and be responsible for their work.
• Defines success in terms of the whole team and creates a feeling of belonging among team members.
• Works well with others to achieve team goals.
• Consistently places team priorities above personal priorities.

Resource Usage

• Consistently completes all assigned projects within budget and gains approval if project will exceed budget.
• Allocates resources in the most productive and efficient way possible.
• Minimizes rework.

Managing People

• Provides ongoing guidance and positive reinforcement to improve performance.
• Provides challenging tasks and assignments and will work with people who need improvement.
• Consistently evaluates, provides feedback and develops employees to their next level of performance.
• Shares and/or delegates power and authority with staff.
• Shares rewards with staff.
• Provides corrective and/or progressive disciplinary actions to modify/improve inappropriate behavior or performance.
• Ensures staff are properly selected, used, appraised and developed, and treated fairly.
• Effective at managing a diverse workforce.

Communications

• Presents ideas and information both verbally and in writing in a clear, concise manner.
• Shares the information people need to know to be successful.
• Informs others on a timely basis.
• Consistently shows a great deal of understanding, courtesy, tact, empathy, and concern when addressing others.
• Demonstrates very effective listening, questioning and interpersonal skills.
• Follows direction.

Credibility/Dependability

• Maintains an excellent record of punctuality and plans absences in advance.
• Keeps promises and commitments.
• Consistently completes projects accurately and on time and is very thorough when performing work and is conscientious about attending to details.

Leadership

• Inspires, motivates, guides others toward goals.
• Coaches, mentors and challenges staff and adapts leadership style to various situations.
• Consistently demonstrates decisiveness in day-to-day actions.
• Takes unpopular positions when necessary.
• Faces adversity head on.

Strategic Planning

• Actively and effectively contributes on a consistent basis to drive technology strategy and indirectly drive overall corporate strategy.
• Has broad knowledge and perspective on the strategic issues facing the company.
• Can anticipate future consequences and trends accurately and creates improvement strategies and plans.
• Consistently makes sound, well-informed decisions.
• Clearly understands the impact and implications of decisions.

Operations Planning

• Anticipates and adjusts for potential problems or opportunities.
• Implements or utilizes strategic plans on a day-to-day basis.
• Organizes work, sets priorities, determines resource requirements.
• Determines short- or long-term goals and strategies to achieve them.
• Coordinates with other parts of the company.
• Monitors progress and evaluates outcomes.

Prioritization

• Ability to recognize which tasks are more important at each moment and to distinguish between urgency and importance.
• Allocates attention, energy and time effectively to avoid getting into crisis or trouble.
• Consistently avoids last minute efforts and scrambling – works smarter not harder.

Twice a year, Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley releases her presentation on econonomy and technology trends.  No real surprises here – mobile and social networking are going like gangbusters – but there’s a ton of good data in there.

Some highlights:

• Financial Markets have rebounded lead by a strong technology sector
• Leading economic indicators are pointing up, lagging indicators are still weak
• Mobile internet usage is bigger than most people think:
  • Outpacing desktop internet adoption
  • Carrier networks will be hard pressed to keep up
  • iPhones are driving it as usage is high, not just market share

• Mobile users are more likely to spend money than internet users.  Pay for services and applications have put crappy ringtones and wallpapers in the backseat.  Apple’s recent announcement on “In App Purchases” should help drive adoption.
• Mobile devices will become ubiquitous remotes.  We’ve already seen this with the Viper Smart Start and will see even more devices in the next year.
• Mobile + Social Networking is where the most innovation will occur.

So take a look and see where your next opportunity lies!