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How an organization gains leverage

by Auren Hoffman, November 22, 2010 | Comments

(and gets more done)

Organizations can accomplish more by increasing the "impactfulness" of their employees. In general, there are three ways for star employees to have more impact: 1. Decrease the time needed per project (boost their efficiency) 2. Increase their available time (hiring and delegation) 3. Increase the impact per project (automation)Working on each of these three areas is important for employees to ...

The erosion of online anonymity

by Auren Hoffman, September 29, 2010 | Comments

	(And how to restore it) One of the most important principles of individual privacy is the ability to act anonymously. When people are driving to a store or reading a book at home, they have a reasonable assumption that nobody is monitoring their behavior and attaching it to their name and address.The same should be true on the internet: when you are online, there should ...
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How to introduce two people so they benefit

by Auren Hoffman, June 9, 2010 | Comments

	Proper ways to make introductions via email Email introductions are a poorly-understand art and are often done too hastily without careful thought. Making introductions the right way can be the best way to help two people and create a lot of value. But doing it wrong can make one of the parties look bad and can alienate one or both parties from you.Below are my tips on ...
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How to run effective meetings

by Auren Hoffman, March 30, 2010 | Comments

	The top 10 meeting best practices Most meetings are wastes of time. Even in meetings that people consider to be well-run, there is much room for improvement. But internal meetings – when run effectively – can be the fastest way to reach a vital decision or to disseminate important information. So we’re going to explore some of the best ways to run an internal company meeting. ...
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To grow a company...

by Auren Hoffman, March 1, 2010 | Comments (1)

You need to be good at killing things

Companies are all about building things, not destroying them. When your company is growing, you add lots of things to build the company: employees, investors, products, features, meetings, benefits, processes, reports, code, and more. While it does not come natural for a company (or any organization) to toss things out, every so often you need to look at everything and ...

Friends use the same phone service together

by Auren Hoffman, January 25, 2010 | Comments

Understanding your customers friends can go a long way to better customer retention

We tend to behave similar to our friends. Generally speaking, we like the same music, wear the same clothes, share the same hobbies, eat similar types of food, and even vote in a similar fashion. Now, there is evidence that we even like to use the same mobile phone service.Mobile_phone_couple Michael Driscoll, founder of data analytics firm Dataspora, studied over ...

How to hire A-Players

by Auren Hoffman, December 17, 2009 | Comments

Actively recruiting passive candidates can be better that referrals

Hunting for the ideal job candidate? Ask any hiring managers and they will very likely give you a ranking system for would-be hires. Lower on the list are those actively looking for a job. High on the list are employee referrals.That's because A-Players are often happily employed. So it is hard to find them. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to ...

Common traits of A-Players

by Auren Hoffman, November 18, 2009 | Comments (1)

An unscientific observation of what A-Players have in common

We often talk about this elusive "A-Player" - a person that everyone wants to hire but someone people can rarely find. In this article we'll attempt to discuss how to spot these people and see what they have in common.A few points up-front:1. It is almost impossible to determine if someone is an A-Player until you've worked with them for ...

A call for transportation innovation

by Auren Hoffman, October 21, 2009 | Comments

Planes, trains, automobiles and other ways to get around haven't changed much in the past 40 years

More can be done to change the way we move around the world. The four decades that ended in 1969 were a Golden Age of Transportation. Innovation since that time has fallen short of our dream.We're constantly on the move. But the planes, trains, automobiles, and other machines that get us from place to place haven't changed much in the ...

A second(ary) chance for venture capital

by Auren Hoffman, August 27, 2009 | Comments

Troubled VCs need to rethink how long they invest in startups; many should fund early and then sell

There's plenty of fretting in Silicon Valley and beyond over the venture capital industry, how broken it has become, and what needs to be done about it. Proposed solutions abound, with some favoring a government bailout, others saying the ranks of venture capitalists need to be slashed dramatically, and some proposing the creation of a market where equity in startups ...

Productivity gains drive innovation

by Auren Hoffman, June 30, 2009 | Comments

A software engineer's value has increased three times that of a marketing person

Everyone is more productive these days. This has been a consistent trend for at least the past decade, where productivity gains have been particularly strong within the business sector. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, today's business industry workers are on average 30% more productive than their 1998 counterparts (productivity growth of roughly 2.6% per year).Within ...

Identifying the elusive influencer

by Auren Hoffman, May 13, 2009 | Comments

Marketers spend over $1 billion on campaigns targeting influencers

Most companies internally assign a value to their customers that predicts how much money the customer will spend in the future, otherwise known as 'Total Customer Value' (TCV). Conventionally, the best way to determine a customer's TCV is to look at how much they have spent in the past: United Airlines gives its best customers frequent upgrades along with a ...

Why startups do the pendulum

by Auren Hoffman, February 27, 2009 | Comments (1)

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It's in our nature to oscillate on ideas and mates

When us humans come out of a suboptimal experience, we tend to overcorrect in the opposite direction in our next experience. Repeated overcorrecting results in pendulum-ing (which is often sub-optimal behavior).For instance, let's say you dated a workaholic investment banker and the relationship goes sour (for reasons not qualifying you to be part of Dating a Banker Anonymous). The next ...

Homophily changes the way we think

by Auren Hoffman, October 30, 2008 | Comments

You think for yourself, but act like your friends

Birds of a feather tend to shop together. That we know. They also tend to talk together and walk together; and who their friends are affects more than just what type of jeans they buy. Their friends have the capacity to affect their tastes, activities, and their lives overall. Sociologists call this phenomenon of being affected by one's friends "homophily" ...

Technology - the deciding factor in elections

by Auren Hoffman, August 26, 2008 | Comments

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama have stamped elections with innovative technology

Technology and an appreciation of how to use it have always been important to political campaigns. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used radio to get his message across effectively to voters. Lyndon Johnson rode a helicopter to get him around Texas in his famous race for the Senate. John F. Kennedy understood the power of television better than Richard Nixon during the ...

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