How to Say "No" to Your CEO's Random Product Ideas

The reality is that you will never prioritize the CEO’s "great" new idea. Here's how to let your strategy say "no" for you.

The reality is that you will never prioritize the CEO’s "great" new idea. Here's how to let your strategy say "no" for you.

Russ Laraway wades through all of the competing opinions, complex frameworks and advice out there on how to be a better manager, creating a simple, data-backed leadership toolkit.

Editor’s note: Scott Weiss is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. An approachable and authentic CEO is essential to fostering a high-performance, open communications culture.

Here’s what the best leaders do.
U.S. Army Engineer School Commandant’s Reading List
How to minimize the drama and keep your team on track.
I’ve found the following to be common (and not easily taught) in people whose product skills I admire.

John Farrell took his team from the bottom of their division last year to the 2013 World Series with a set of tactics every manager should learn.

“I’ve probably revised this investor pitch deck 200 times,” a founder told me recently. She’d met with more than 50 potential investors before closing a seed round last month. This might sound excessive to some, but her experience is not unusual. Entrepreneurs often spend…
Awesome List of resources on leading people and being a manager. Geared toward tech, but potentially useful to anyone. - LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing

The home of Process Excellence covers topics from Business Process Management (BPM) to Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, Lean Six Sigma and more. Latest news, freshest insight and upcoming events and webinars.

Apple is famous for not engaging in the focus-grouping that defines most business product and marketing strategy. Which is partly why Apples products and advertising are so insanely great. They have the courage of their own convictions, instead of the opinions of everyone else’s…
Leadership Now is a leading source for leadership development and analysis. We believe that anyone can make a difference by leading from where they are.

"The success of your startup is determined before you ship a single line of code." Okay, you’re right, Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese war general and author

We all know that leaders need vision and energy, but after an exhaustive review of the most influential theories on leadership–as well as workshops with thousands of leaders and aspiring leaders–the authors learned that great leaders also share four unexpected qualities. The…

A company study found that a manager’s technical skills were far less valued by employees than people skills.

Tastes great, less filling

It’s really hard.

Fight the Good Fight The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Try Honey Before Vinegar If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. On the contrary … …

The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership explores the classical figures to determine the ten crucial axioms of leadership. Rule 1. Know Theyself. Rule 2 ...

Don’t let progress end when the meeting does.

The step-by-step guide for becoming a good manager.
In response to yesterday’s post on management design patterns, many readers asked for examples of best practices. So I’m going to write about the management best practices I have been taught and I have observed in startups. This is the first post of that series. The first…

In the least surprising news of 2016, Yahoo is selling its core business to Verizon for a sad $5 billion. Everyone knew this was coming — but for some reason, the headlines keep blaming Marissa.

On Sunday, I was fortunate enough to give a talk at the 9th annual Harvard Business School Entrepreneurship Conference. I’m trying to be better about posting the slides from these talks as t…

The ability to get issues on the table and work through them constructively is critical to having a healthy culture. Managers can normalize productive conflict on your team by using an exercise to map out the unique value of each role and the tensions that should exist among…

Leadership has traditionally been taught as a set of larger actions, such as having a difficult conversation or coaching someone. In reality, leading well is an integrated activity, in which one is doing many things simultaneously. One way to learn to do this better is to think…

This is the legendary presentation about cross-functional teams from Ken Norton that made donuts and product management synonymous.
Fuel success by linking a company’s strategic goals to the reasons people are proud to work there.

There’s no “right way” to do it.

Employee well-being and happiness are surprisingly powerful predictors of performance.

If you’re worried that your employees are eyeing the door, it’s time to start having some important career-defining conversations. In this piece, executive coach Susan Peppercorn outlines five questions to start asking your direct reports so that you can get a better sense of…
Web magazine about user experience matters, providing insights and inspiration for the user experience community

The traditional corporate approach to motivating people has been a combination of carrots and sticks: a system of financial incentives designed to mobilize everyone around a plan designed by a few smart people at the top. Multiple studies have confirmed that, for any work…
If you want to help people, don’t give them advice. Do this instead.

Every company makes decisions based on the highest paid person's opinion. It turns out it's just a hypothesis. Here's how to tame it.

Front's CEO and co-founder Mathilde Collin shares why a founder’s discipline matters more than vision, unveiling her own best practices and templates for communication, time management, fundraising and team building.

Molly Graham helped forge a work culture at Facebook that's withstood huge amounts of growth. Today, she's something of a rapid scaling expert. Here's the key to doing it right, she says.

Building effective organisations is a remarkably useful, if rare, skill. This is what it looks like, what it consists of, and how to tell if someone has it.

Frustrated with your Executive team meetings? We tapped 25 top leaders from the startup C-Suite to share their tested tips, from getting started with an executive team to crafting the agenda and tracking success. Whether you're a first-time CEO or seasoned startup leader, there…

“We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.”―Marshall Rosenberg, As a founder, my biggest regrets revolve around not having difficu…

It’s important to understand that when you, as a leader, communicate with your team, using weaker words weakens your message and blunts your ability to inspire people. It’s not enough to just throw thoughts out there and hope for the best. You need to actively recommend ideas…

Senior leaders, particularly CEOs, confront a central paradox in their work: They generally have access to more lines of communication than anybody else, but the information that flows to them is suspect and compromised. Warning signals are tamped down. Key facts are omitted…

I learned from bosses & peers, including some famous peeps like Reed Hastings, Patty McCord, and Dan Rosensweig. But mainly I learned by doing, supercharged by feedback from many "Friends of Gib."

Industrial genius Carl Braun believed that clear thinking and clear communication go hand in hand. Here the guide on writing productively to get things done.

I've worked at various tech companies: from "traditional" shops and consultancies, through an investment bank, to high-growth tech firms. I've also talked with software engineers working at startups, banking, automotive, big tech, and more "traditional" companies. This mix had a…