Right Now
I help boards and executives at growth-stage technology companies continue (or resume) rapid acceleration by advising them on improving their leadership capabilities, operations, and technology. While I specialize in executive advising on leadership and process, I can also dive into deep technical problems with Data Science or Software Engineering departments. Feel free to contact me directly to learn more.
I have a few tech projects in progress that will undoubtedly become blog posts. I’m working on an e-book about leadership in organizations, as well as a field manual for triaging performance and architecture in growth-stage startups. I sometimes write code for open-source projects like TinySite and CompressTest. I also work on ApplyByAPI, a tool that helps companies focus on quality over quantity in their tech hiring process.
Recent Publications
On Forecasts
Overview I was meeting with a client recently, and since it was the end of the year and they were in their budgeting process we were discussing forecasting methodologies. They were asking about their marketing function specifically, but the conversation applied more or less to all areas of the business which set targets and/or develop a budget. So basically, the whole business. It’s important to note that in many companies budgeting and forecasting are the same thing, so this is as much a budgeting topic as a forecasting one. The reason that a lot of departments are asked to do forecasts in the first place is simply so that the forecast can be added as a line item in a budget. ... read moreLeadership and Communication
Good leadership is hard to quantify, especially when considering intrinsic qualities like humility (which I argue is the most important quality of all). However, there are external skills which can separate effective and ineffective leaders, and communication is arguably the most fundamental of those externally-visible skills. When a company is small, and everyone fits in a single room, then a shared vision can almost be maintained by osmosis. Additionally, at this stage a company is usually extremely focused on a narrow goal or set of goals, so there is clarity not only due to small company sizes having more efficient communication, but also because the set of objectives is small as well. ... read moreAn Unreasonably Deep Dive into Project Euler Problem 2
First, the problem definition: Each new term in the Fibonacci sequence is generated by adding the previous two terms. By starting with 1 and 2, the first 10 terms will be: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, … By considering the terms in the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not exceed four million, find the sum of the even-valued terms. Classic Fibonacci problem, with a slight twist due to the summation on top. Spoiler alert: a simple loop is fastest. Keep reading to see why. ... read moreAn Unreasonably Deep Dive into Project Euler Problem 1
Introduction As part of my work in keeping my technical skills sharp, I periodically go back to basics or solve old problems again in order to ensure my foundations are strong. So it was with great fun that I decided to start back at the beginning with Project Euler. One of the techniques I also use for this sort of thing is not just to solve the problem, but to really explore it. Write additional code, tests, benchmarks, and explore the underlying mathematics where practical. ... read more