351 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

“Feedback” is a loaded term. Not only do you tighten up when you ask for “feedback,” so does the feedback giver. Swapping it out for “advice” is more inviting and indicates you value your colleague’s counsel. Instead of saying “Can I have some feedback on what I could have done better?” say “Do you have any advice on how I can improve on X?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Shivani Berry | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Career, Management, Personal Development

Lots of advice centers around getting better at giving feedback to others, but we rarely focus on how to attract useful feedback about ourselves — even though it’s in our own best interest to do so. What’s more is we often unintentionally repel the rare feedback that does come our way by getting defensive or shutting down.

Knowing what other people think about you can be … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Shivani Berry | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

What seems like a simple purchase decision sits within a larger context in the customers’ lives. And as marketers, that context is critical, because the words in their heads will reflect their situation rather than your product. Therefore, the better we understand that context, the more effective our product and marketing teams will be.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Marketing / Sales

What’s in your prospects’ heads? If you could stop people in the middle of their day and snapshot-read their minds, what would you find? You would not find a list of product features or marketing platitudes. You would see anxieties, fears, doubts, hopes, dreams and struggles. Therefore the best way to get past the attention filter is to talk about the stuff that is in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Marketing / Sales

When I hear that founders are looking to “educate the market,” I get nervous. In order to educate somebody, you need to fully capture their attention and get them to suspend their current beliefs and consider, adopt and master a new way of operating. I run an education business, and I must say that is a herculean task.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Language/market fit is the most under-appreciated concept for early-stage startups. For starters, most founders are focused on finding product/market fit, zeroing in on the right set of features to match their prospects’ needs. Moreover, fine-tuning language seems like “marketing,” which is usually seen as a later priority, not step zero. Lastly, people also don’t tend to like going out of their comfort zone — and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Entrepreneurship

We can think our way into a new way of acting, and we can also act our way into a new way of thinking.

Content: Quotation | Author: Alisa Cohn | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Personal Development

People don’t want to volunteer feedback, but asking “What do I need to get better at?” over and over and over again signals that you’re serious about getting better. You could ask your executive team, or folks one or two levels down. It’s also good to ask people who have been with the company a long time — if they were there when it was … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Alisa Cohn | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

Russ Laraway’s book When They Win, You Win, weaves together tons of existing management studies from top-notch sources like Gallup, his own primary research, as well as thoughtful stories from his own decades-long career.

From the Marines to software to VC, Laraway has spotted a pattern that frequently crops up and muddies the waters for managers everywhere. “People have become far too focused on all the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Even after years of research, Jonah Berger is surprised at how people are so quick to identify the effects of social influence on others, but fail to see those same influences at work on themselves. A Wharton professor and bestselling author of Contagious and Invisible Influence, Berger has spent over 15 years studying how social influence works and how it leads products, services and ideas to catch … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jonah Berger | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Everything else you’re doing to affect engagement is worth less than half of whatever you’re doing to make your managers great.

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation

Add one particular phrase to your repertoire to continue to bang the drum of what matters most. Ask the question: Which quarterly goal does that workstream support? If you keep finding that the work that you’re doing isn’t reflected in the quarterly goals, it’s time to rethink how you’re approaching those OKRs, or get them right the next time.

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management

The one thing every single one of us has in common at work is that we want to be successful. So whether or not a manager has charisma is irrelevant in that context. It’s the person who does the grinding work each day or week to make their team members successful. That’s who people ultimately want to work for.

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management

Nobody ever applies for a job called ‘leader.’ The job is usually called ‘manager.’ We have to restore dignity to the office of the manager. I’ve found that folks are too focused on finding really complicated, cool leadership-y things for their unique environment, instead of just focusing on the stuff that works pretty much everywhere.

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Leadership, Management

There’s one common ingredient across every type of manager: You’re leading people. So the core of what makes for good management can’t be all that different, whether you’re leading a team of baristas or engineers.

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management

Build a team in the same way you would build a product. Just as you would think about your users and their pain points, you should think about your team and the problems you’re facing so that you have clarity on what you’re solving for.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jiaona Zhang | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Good strategy is good storytelling. People tend to overcomplicate it, but it’s actually quite simple. Strategy is outlining the things you are going to do to get where you need to go. I stress a lot around telling human stories. A good strategist should be able to say in 30 seconds what we’re doing for our users.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jiaona Zhang | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Strategy

An important skillset of being a good manager is what I call being an “emotional dampener” for the team. An emotional dampener finds themselves in situations where they know their team is upset, they know people are frustrated about a certain problem but choose to coach them and help them by dampening their emotions as opposed to riling them up. If that’s not an easy … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jiaona Zhang | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management

Trying to change someone’s mind often feels like a fruitless pursuit, almost as if it requires waving some sort of magic wand or casting an enchanting spell.

Trying to change someone’s mind often feels like a fruitless pursuit, almost as if it requires waving some sort of magic wand or casting an enchanting spell. On a smaller scale, you might think of a particularly sticky … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jonah Berger | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales

Here on The Review, we’ve committed ourselves to an annual ritual each January. This year marks one decade of using the first week of a shiny new year as a chance to revisit every article and podcast episode we published in the 365 days prior.

2022 certainly brought plenty to reflect on. Assembling this year’s list was a reminder of just how quickly things can change. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management