Career Growth
12 Things I Learned in Big Tech
A career in big tech teaches you plenty about success, failure, office politics, and what it takes to be a successful leader.
David Anderson
Career Growth
Stop Trying Harder. Change Your Environment Instead.
I cover why willpower and good intentions often fail, and how changing your environment changes your habits, career, and skills.
Organizations
How Amazon Uses Tenets to Make Better Decisions at Every Level
How to write tenets that resolve disagreements, prevent repeated debates, and empower employees to make better decisions independently.
Managing Up
4 Steps to Changing People's Perceptions
Perceptions can't be wrong. They're just our mental internal reality of what we've experienced through our life. Changing perceptions is easy if you know how to look at the problem.
Organizations
Why Great Engineering Teams Don't Need Productivity Metrics
Measuring output and time spent is easy, while measuring efficiency and effectiveness is hard. Here's why trusting your engineers beats tracking their productivity.
Career Growth
The Ambitious Leader's Guide to Avoiding Burnout
You don't have to choose between career ambition and reasonable hours. The issue is figuring out how to stop doing everything yourself.
Organizations
The Secret to Sounding Like a Senior Leader? Say Less.
The ability to communicate clearly, concisely, and with the right amount of context becomes more important as you climb the leadership ladder.
Late Career
You Can Be Right and Still Fail as a Leader. Understanding Disagree and Commit.
Leaders don't blindly follow decisions, but they also don't dig in their heels forever. Here's how to know when to fight, when to fold, and how to own the decision once it has been made.
Mid Career
Your Career Isn't a Meritocracy. It's a Trustocracy.
Trustocracy sounds funny, but it's a more accurate representation of how we're measured. We aren't (and can't) be measured objectively on what we accomplish at work. But we are (unavoidably) measured by the trust we've built with our co-workers.
Career Growth
Hit the Ground Running: How to Ramp Up in Your New Job in 3 Weeks
Particularly if you change jobs, your career growth will be heavily connected to your ability to ramp up quickly. Here's how.
Late Career
The 7-Step Process I Use for Business Writing
A practical process for turning messy ideas into clear, persuasive business writing.
Career Growth
Why High Performers Need Mentors More as Their Careers Advance
Mentorship isn't about getting help. It's about expanding your mental toolbox with experiences you haven't had yet.