459 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

If you’re going to be successful as an entrepreneur, the biggest thing is being able to take in conflicting feedback from all these people, many of whom are jaded or have bad habits, and some who are spot on. You have to be able to sit there and distill that information into something valuable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Nat Turner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

If you can’t think out of the box, make the box bigger. Start by relaxing constraints.

Content: Quotation | Author: Howard Morgan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Innovation

We’ve found is that the most high-impact managers make a regular habit of setting aside moments of reflection, putting in the deliberate time and work it takes to gain a new perspective on their teams, their cross-functional relationships and their own effectiveness from a higher altitude.

It got us thinking — there’s certainly plenty of content on the questions managers should be asking others, whether it’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

Adam Grant agrees that brainwriting is best, pointing to evidence that groups generate fewer and worse ideas while brainstorming than when the very same people are working on their own.

“If you know the group is nervous about ego issues or status hierarchies you should collect the ideas anonymously. It’s about leveraging the power of the group for idea selection, where people are actually better collectively, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Most folks aren’t honest with their feelings because they get unsolicited advice or intrusive questions — you can try to stop that cycle on your team with the culture you create and the micro-actions you take.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jessmina Archbold | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

If you have to ask if you’re in love, you’re probably not in love. The same goes with product/market fit — if you have to ask if you have it, you probably don’t.

Content: Quotation | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

In startups, there will be times you need to persist, and times you need to pivot — therein lies the founder’s dilemma. To get conviction on the right path, validate your gut feelings with logic and research.

Content: Quotation | Author: Tara Viswanathan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

At the end of the day, the only thing that actually matters is the impact our work has on our company, our customers, our colleagues, and our professional development. And the only way to stay on top of that is to hold ourselves accountable to our higher-order goals with as much enthusiasm as we have for the dopamine rush of reaching inbox zero.

The best leaders … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Brie Wolfson | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

Metrics are, in my opinion, the least important part of an annual plan because they’re not very strategic. The metrics tell us if we’re on the right path. But charting the right path is actually the hard work.

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

While early employees help set implicit norms, building systems early in a company’s lifecycle sets explicit norms. How do decisions get made? How are meetings structured? How are goals set? These systems are much easier to build when the company is small, and very challenging to put into place as the company grows.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kevin Fishner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

As CEO, if someone brings a problem to me, of course, I’m always anxious to solve it. But I’m always going to think, “How did this problem come to be? And how did it come to me? And should it have come to me?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Girouard | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

I think a lot of managers convince themselves that the person sitting across from them is an employee and our shared interest is about what we do here in this company today and tomorrow. And I think what I’ve learned is that the best managers say “No, no, no, that person sitting across from me is a human being, and I need to play a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

We’re a memo culture, not a meeting culture, and we put a lot of time into long-form documentation. Why? My belief is that content scales; your time doesn’t. I’ve personally written many hundreds of pages of strategy and documentation to align the team. Keep in mind what content replaces: taking meetings to explain the same material over and over again, emailing people, meetings, calls, seemingly … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Communication, Management, Organizational Behavior

Your job as a CEO is to build fire departments, not put out fires. If you’re regularly putting out fires yourself, you’re doing it wrong. Focus your time on how to enable others on your team to put out fires themselves.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Corporate Governance

The problem with to-do lists is they lead to unrealistic optimism about how much you can accomplish because items on a to-do list are untethered from the constraint of reality: time.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

The most substantial improvement in my ability to manage my time came from using my calendar as my to-do list (and subsequently killing my to-do list).

I used to have the habit of overcommitting myself, which became a major source of anxiety in my life because I was dropping balls left and right, and it led me to disappoint a lot of people when deadlines would … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

When I go to my manager asking for her to provide feedback on a resource or simply take a look at something, I appreciate that she challenges me to share my intent and clarify what I’m looking for in a response. This helps streamline communication and prevent any misunderstanding, and that clarity of thought is something I always remember when I’m making an ask.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lauren Jones | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

When my managers have been great, they’ve looked at my situation with compassion above all, above what they (or the company) need from me. The same goes for when I’ve been my best as a manager. That doesn’t mean the company’s priorities don’t prevail — it just means I feel acknowledged as a human being in whatever the situation is.

Content: Quotation | Author: Devan Goldstein | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

The best managers are incredibly consistent — they’re almost always on time, follow-up, and close the loop on open items. The diligence and consistency seem straightforward but are rare in a leader.

Content: Quotation | Author: Liz Kosinski | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

For the past couple of years, Annie Duke has been sharing her advice with founders and angel investors in closed sessions for the First Round community, but given our focus on open-sourcing so others in the tech ecosystem can learn, we thought readers of The Review would be curious to see a few pages from her decision-making playbook, tailored specifically for the startup context.

In this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Annie Duke | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior