GeekMBA360

Jim Collins is one of my favorite management authors. In this New York Times article, Mr. Collins talked about how he kept a running tally of how he’s spending his time. “That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for [...]

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Thirteen months ago I took a very challenging job. I was tasked to turn around a struggling $70-million-a-year commodity business. There was a lot of skepticism about the prospect of this business. After spending several weeks of reviewing the business metrics, we determined a very focused strategy. More importantly, we focused on building small wins. [...]

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I read a lot of books each year. But, my choice of the best career book of 2010 is easy. This book is enlightening because it explains to you the reality of corporate politics, and it teaches you how to play politics. I know this sounds cynical, un-ethical, and depressing. However, we’re all humans. We [...]

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Fellow blogger and venture capitalist Brad Feld had a very interesting post on his blog: The Power of a CEO 360 Review. I had to admit that I hadn’t been a big fan of performance reviews in any shape or form in the past. In fact, one of the most popular articles on this blog [...]

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Business Week has an interesting article about Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawk. I have to admit that I’m neither a Seattle Seahawk Fan nor a USC Trojan fan. However, I really enjoyed this quote from Pete Carroll: “I had been head coach of the New York Jets and the New England Patriots. [...]

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Last week I came across an interesting article on the chain of events led to General McChrystal’s downfall. Here is my favorite quote from the article: As an executive, Obama has little tolerance for what he calls "unforced errors" — mistakes that are entirely preventable. In that regard, McChrystal’s team had committed an unforced error [...]

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It’s puzzling to a lot of people — my friend Jay is quitting his finance career to get into operational side of a high tech start-up. Jay is a brilliant young financial analyst. When I use the term “brilliant”, I really mean it. Two and half years ago, Jay started telling all of his family [...]

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Today, I would like to share with you part II of Foreign Professional in China series. I recently interviewed Mr. Robert Yu, who is a fellow Cal Bear and received his MS in Biology from Northwestern. Like Marie Cheng, Robert also took the road less traveled, and got his MBA from Tsinghua University. Robert is [...]

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Not everyone is in the position for doing this. But, Let’s say that you’re single, a year or two removed from college, and you could live off savings and family’s support for a year. You have a promising job at a Fortune 500 company. You’re given an opportunity to pursue your dream job. However, there [...]

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When I graduated from college in 1997, I had three job offers: Job offer #1 was from Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), a large professional service firm. Job offer #2 was from a medium sized, publicly traded enterprise software company. This company had about 600 employees, and just went public a few years earlier. It was [...]

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