459 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

One of the common mistakes that we, and I’m sure other companies, have made is that you fully allocate your budget at the beginning of the year. You’ve got five people working on one idea, five working on another, and one of those things is just taking off. And when they ask for more resources, leaders often say, “Well, it’s April, we do budget allocation … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeff Lawson | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Finance

Humans are so good at finding patterns, often to our own detriment. More often, we find patterns where we shouldn’t.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jane Davis | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

You can’t trust your initial reaction to feedback. Defensive responses are driven by common fears about our own competence, and fear is a powerful distorter of the messages we hear.

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

Every formal 1:1 or review conversation with your manager should include the following: “Please tell me one thing I should stop doing, one thing I should keep doing, and one thing I should start doing to help me progress in my career.”

Content: Quotation | Author: Monty Fowler | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Career

One tool that’s often overlooked in driving your career is using the performance process at your current job. Most companies have annual reviews where performance reviews are compiled and used to determine who is ready for promotion. Don’t wait for that review period to drive your promotion. Find out the critical success factors your supervisor will need to see in order to support your promotion. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Anjuan Simons | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Career

Plant seeds throughout the year with your manager about the skills you’re trying to acquire that are outside of your immediate role. Restate these at your regular performance reviews, but also when someone on the team or in the organization leaves, which may be a win-win for you and your manager. If you know the company may be considering a reorganization, offer your skills to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Randhir Vieira | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Career

Write down every person you work with, their biggest need, and their most ideal “OMG this makes my life so much better!” Now you have a list of your organization’s greatest needs and solutions. Now, decide if filling any of these needs aligns with you (Hint: If you’re excited about it, that’s usually the right mark).

Content: Quotation | Author: Davit Balagyozyan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Career

The best version of your career is finding jobs that are in the Venn diagram between what you love doing and what you’re exceptional at. This may sound obvious, but oftentimes as you get more senior, the Venn diagram is often “things I’m exceptional at” overlapping with “things I hate doing.” You have to know yourself well enough to turn those jobs down, even when … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Career

“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