Tag Archives: leadership

“What does it take to be CEO?” Reflections a year after leaving.

Posted on January 1, 2018 by flybrand1976

The question caught me off guard. My interviews after resigning in October ‘16 were split between pure startups (IoT, Industrial, Fiber and Filtration related mostly), where having had the CEO title was enough, and bigger companies / past customers (mostly … Continue reading →

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“What does [did] it take to be[come] CEO?” Answer: Goals / Failure / Reality

Posted on January 1, 2018 by flybrand1976

StrengthsFinder is a great way to talk about personal motivations (Learner, Activator, Strategic, Context and Input). DiSC profiles (Persuader / Inspirational) are also helpful – but this tool still feels more tailored to corporate HR. StrengthsFinder is an amazing framework … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Industry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“What does it take to be (a good) CEO?” Answer: People

Posted on January 1, 2018 by flybrand1976

All of the successes were from bringing in good people, helping them frame problems and getting them the tools they needed to be successful. The failures? They were mine – mostly due to not properly resourcing a problem with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Disruption, Filtration, Innovation, Invention, Marketing, Materials Science, Methods, Textile, Theory, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Growth by Document

Posted on September 7, 2016 by flybrand1976

The current business has experienced pleasant success despite a challenging market.  We grew our ASP from $40,000 by nearly 20x, increased our industrial installation base by similar numbers and have figured out how to grow in a long sales cycle market. … Continue reading →

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Recruiting and HR: Facets of a Job

Posted on September 6, 2016 by flybrand1976

We’ve had good success in recruiting and building a talented team.  As part of that our job descriptions became much clearer in some ways, and less clear in others.  We’ve also observed that our best candidates and most successful hires … Continue reading →

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“I hate your plan. (But I won’t suggest alternatives.)”

Posted on August 22, 2016 by flybrand1976

Names can create power.  Finding an existing accepted name is even more helpful.  I encountered a management challenge that has been hard to name. After circling the problem for a few weeks, I opened up Pirie’s, How to Win Every … Continue reading →

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