“Keep your identity small.” —Paul Graham “Identity” has become somewhat of a dirty word, especially in Silicon Valley circles. In many minds, the word “identity” goes hand in hand with the word “politics”; a divisive tool used by politicians to win voters by appealing to religious or ethnic affiliations. YCombinator founder Paul Graham even wrote…
Each month, we invite luminaries from around the world to the LinkedIn campus to share their insights with LinkedIn employees. Last week, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and Gina Bianchini, Founder & CEO of Mightybell and Co-Founder of Lean In, joined me for a fireside chat. I have…
I appreciated the discussion generated by my essay If, Why and How Founder-CEOs Should Hire a Professional CEO. A quick sampling of some of the more thoughtful reactions on the piece: Sarah Lacy, PandoDaily: Hoffman’s essay speaks to a careful cultural shift that’s happening in the Valley. It’s pushing the pendulum away from the extreme “THE…
Risk tends to get a bad rap. We associate it with things like losing money in the stock market, or riding a motorcycle without a helmet. But risk isn’t the enemy–it’s a permanent part of life. In fact, being proactively intelligent about risk is a prerequisite for seizing breakout opportunities. Many more people would enjoy…
Is physical retail doomed? Last week, in conversation with Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily, Marc Andreessen argued that the retail industry is over. In one sense, the impending transformation is clear to intelligent Silicon Valley insiders. In the same way technology disrupted the bloated cost structure of the newspaper industry, technology will inevitably disrupt huge swaths of the…
Earlier this month, I wrote that breakout opportunities are what transform your career. Opportunities do not float like clouds. They are firmly attached to individuals. If you’re looking for an opportunity, you’re really looking for people. If you’re evaluating an opportunity, you’re really evaluating people. If you’re trying to marshal resources to go after an opportunity,…
20 years ago, the classic startup model was to have young founders start a breakthrough company, then bring in “grey hair” in the form of experienced executives once it was time to scale the business. Key examples included Cisco, Yahoo, eBay, Google, and many smaller companies. In the last decade, however, that common wisdom has shifted,…
Success begins with opportunities. Opportunities are like the snap to the quarterback in football. You still have to move the ball down the field; you still have to execute. But without a snap to the quarterback, there’s no touchdown. For a young lawyer, an opportunity could mean being assigned to work with the smartest partner…
Relationships are living, breathing things. Feed, nurture, and care about them: they grow. Neglect them: they die. The best way to strengthen a relationship is to jump-start the long-term process of give-and-take. Do something for another person—help. But how? Here’s a good example. When Jack Dorsey was cofounding Square—the mobile payments company that turns any smartphone…
Imagine you receive a digital camera with a built-in memory card for your birthday. You bring it on a six-month trip to Africa where you won’t have access to a computer—so all the photos you want to keep must fit on that one memory card. When you first arrive you snap photos freely, and maybe…
As I wrote in my previous post, each type of relationship in your life is different. Today, we’re going to focus on two types of relationships that especially matter in a professional context: allies and acquaintances. Professional Allies: People Who Have Your Back What makes someone an ally in your job and career? First, it’s someone you consult regularly…
In my previous post, I wrote about why relationships matter in your career. Yet, “relationship” can mean many things. It can be long-distance or proximate, project-only or long-term, emotionally close or purely professional. There are bosses, coworkers, colleagues, and subordinates. There are friends, neighbors, family members, and long-lost acquaintances. There are people you relate to out of love,…
Even if you realize the fact that you are in Permanent Beta, even if you develop a competitive advantage, even if you adapt your career plans to changing conditions—even if you do these things but do so alone—you’ll fall short. World-class professionals build networks to help them navigate the world. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a…
In my earlier posts I’ve written about how to establish a competitive advantage in the career marketplace and how to do flexible career planning via Plan A, Plan B, and Plan Z. Here, I want to recap five key considerations you should keep in mind when you are crafting any sort of career plan. 1. Leverage Your Competitive Advantage…