At first my self imposed rule was that I would only accept invitations from people that I really knew. Then I started viewing there lists of friends and saw other people that I knew but had not invited me. So I started inviting them to become my friends. Recently, I found myself accepting an invitation from some I did not know but who wrote saying she knew one of my good friends very well. I guess, soon I will be contacting people I do not even know.
Archive for June, 2007
Am I a facebook slut?
June 23, 2007Fire for Sucess
June 18, 2007My wife keeps asking me to share some of my business management experience. Frankly, I never think of myself as a manager although I have managed people most of my life and I actually did a pretty good job at it if one looks at the results. So here goes: I have been advising a young CEO who is also a dear friend about how to grow his very successful internet company. Last year he and his partner decided to bring in some experience talent. Young companies get to this point if they are successful. Many times their company is the largest company they have ever been in and they do not have the experience. As a business gets larger it often gets more complex and there are many decisions that have to be taken every day. The CEO can no longer handle it and his initial management team can not do it either (usually). A good example of this is in the area of Sales Management. Selling and managing a sales organization is not the same thing. When I started up a business in Israel in 1974 to do medical computer systems, I was the only sales person and I was great. I got a million dollars the first year. I got two million in the second year. But I got the same number in the third year and realized that I need sales people. The initial effect of that was an actual decline in sales as I spent my time trying to train them about the product and because I did not know how to manage them. Things eventually got better. My friend hired a very experienced person from a large company to run sales but he did not work out. There are many reason for this but the result was that my friend began to question is own competence about hiring. I remember going through this myself early in my career. I made several bad hires. I went to my boss and said, I thought I might not be a good manager since I hired badly. He asked what I thought my ratio of good to bad hires was and I said 50%. He then told me that I was doing better than he was. That is when I learned that being skilled at recognizing a bad hire and taking action to remove that person was a very important skill (my friend demonstrated that as well). You have to be able to fire if you are ever going to be able to hire. And over time you will probably get more skilled at the hiring side but frankly it is very hard to hire senior people. They would not be senior if they had not developed the skills that will convince you that they are the right person. But there is no choice. Companies that grow quickly have to hire senior people. But this is an effective board can be a big help. They can help check out the person because they usually have more experience and contacts.
Happy Y-Chromosome Day
June 17, 2007
I just meet with my father, my two sons and my three grandsons (seven copies of the same Y-Chromosome). I know of and other four copies (my father’s brother’s, a second cousin, a nephew and grand nephew). Of course there must be more copies but I do not know who possesses them. The copies that I know about came to San Francisco with my great grandfather in 1900 from what is now Poland but was Galicia at the time. But with all the work being done with genetics, I may find some other copies someday.
Hey buddy can you spare a life?
June 16, 2007I just read something extremely inspiring that I want to share. Please read the article in Newsweek about Mikkel Vestergaard. This Danish man focused his creativity on developing simple products that save lives in African on a grand scale. The article tells of the development of a LifeStraw which is a $3 gadget that lets people drink bad water without picking up diseases (it filters them out).. He developed and supplied two million mosquito repellent bed nets that are estimated to save about 400,000 lives (of course Barbara Bush could have done that just by keeping her diaphragm in).
Many of us are creative and energetic people with more than enough money to keep us comfortable for the rest of our lives. Maybe we can spend a bit of our time, talent and even money to find simple to the problems that are killing so many less fortunate human beings.
How to spend you time when you retire
June 14, 2007Well I am not exactly retired. I have just reversed ratios. Instead of working five days and taking off two each week (like I really got two days off back then), I take off five days and work two (well it sometimes is a bit more). When I got to Europe or Asia for work, I use to take off a day or two to explore out of maybe ten days and now I might work one or two days out of ten days. So the question that many ask me, is “what do you do with you time?” I often answer “what ever I want to do” to demonstrate my freedom” but the truth is I get caught up with stuff. Retirement it has been said is “when you start out the day with nothing to do and at the end of the day you only get half if it done”. I am not sure I am doing even that good. Retirement for me is when you no longer enjoy doing the things you are good at doing and you are no good at doing the things you enjoy. But actually I am pretty good at doing some of the things I enjoy and even getting better at some other things. But I do get sucked into stuff. Like I have spent years working on my family history. Genealogy is a great place to spend the last third of your life (unless you get over time) especially since all the people that could really help you figure things out died before you ever asked them anything. Digital photography is another great time sink. And don’t forget to start a blog. Planning your own travel, paying you own bills is also good for many hours a week. Most importantly, staying fit when you are in your sixties can take up a good ten hours a week. But now I think I may have found the ultimate time sink: Social Networks (see my early post). I just spent hours on facebook and I bet I spend a lot more but first I have to go to Pilates and then deal with the gardener.
Social Network becomes Social Net WORK
June 3, 2007
Being the curious guy that I am, I tend to sign up on a lot of web sites which I rarely use. I f course I tried out the social networking when the first came out. For instance, I jump on Friendster as soon as it launched since my friend, Ram was an investors. Ram is really smart about his investments but not this time. Then Google came out with one but I can’t even remember the name. Oh, yes, it is called Orkut what ever the hell that means. I never got an invite from there but I just check and I do have an account. I got on myspace and eventually facebook. I also joined Linkedin many years ago. I put up a few things on each of these networks and waited to see if any one ever contacted me. I go a number of bites on Linkedin. I think one or two people invited me to join them on frienster. No one contacted me for years on myspace but that has changed which is why I am writing this. I only recently joined facebook. I am also on Heavy (on whose board I serve). Over the years I get 3-5 invitations a month on Linkedin. I only accept invitations from people I know and my network grows by 1-2 people a month. Linkedin does not require me to do much. Now, I am getting invitations from people I really care about on myspace and on facebook. I accept their invitations but I am embarrassed about my presents on these sites. I have not populated them with interesting photos, video and other stuff. It is like having a home without furniture and not wanting to invite you friends and neighbors over. But what am I to do. Do I choose one and decorate and if so, which one? Or do I try to decorate all of them and how much work is that. Maybe I just populate my own person web site and tell people to go there. Anyway, I certainly do not have to worry about what I will be doing in my old age.
