How to know if your company is IPO ready?

As CEO, Can You Focus on Strategy While Ignoring the Pressure of Tactics?

Once your company does an IPO, investors will be focused on short term results, which are affected by tactics. However, as CEO / founder, your company's success has been driven by your focus on a long term, strategic plan.  

You are only IPO ready if you can tune out the short-term noise, and focus on guiding the company to reach your vision.

Is Your Job Vulnerable to Digital Transformation?

If you just focus your job on completing tasks, you will be vulnerable to losing your job in a digital transformation—because tasks can always be automated.  

However, if you focus on giving value (sometimes going beyond assigned tasks) and building relationships with superiors and co-workers, you will become indispensable, and are less likely to lose your job.

Tip for Communicating Better With Your Boss

Find out what the boss needs vs. what he/she says they need.  

Then, you can exceed the request.  

For example, if your boss asks you to compile a list of prospects, and you figure out that the list will be used for sales calls, you can make sure you include all possible phone numbers, and organize the list by both alphabetical order, and time zone.

Don't Let Your Most Valuable Workers Become Bottlenecks

As a management consultant who has worked with many companies to improve processes, I have found that some of the most respected people at work are employees who share their knowledge with their co-workers.

Over time, many long-term employees become subject matter experts in a certain area.  Everyone turns to them when there is an issue in their area, and they are considered valuable to the organization. 

Some of these employees hoard their knowledge under the mistaken impression that it creates job security. Since there are only so many hours in the day, they become a bottleneck in the organization.

However, the really respected co-workers take the time to document and share their knowledge with their more junior co-workers.  The result is a win-win for everyone.  The organization develops redundancy, can get tasks done in a timely matter, the junior associates build their knowledge / skills, and the experienced co-worker benefits too.

By sharing information, they enhance their expert reputation, and they are still the first ones to be approached when there are challenging problems in their areas.  At the same time, they are relieved of having to deal with more routine tasks.  The result is that the expert also grows in his job by shedding mastered tasks, and gets to work on interesting new problems.

Scott Adams on Simplicity

"Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing."
- Scott Adams

How to Improve Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

As an expert on strategic simplicity®, I have worked with industries, including the medical and pharmaceutical fields, where workers need to interact with electronic user interfaces.  The biggest reason that doctors hate EHRs is because of the forced complexity.  EHRs, as currently implemented, lack the flexibility needed to make doctor's lives easier, and allow them to spend more time with their patients.   

Currently, doctors have to fill out many fields which do not apply to every situation, and they must select and enter precise codes and descriptions.

An improved EHR would be organized into sections that can be skipped or selected as needed, and would allow more freeform entries, rather than codes.  The reality is that medical records are shared between human professionals—not machines.  Allow doctors to enter information in a freeform manner, and let them evolve best practices for describing the information. 

Best and Worst Times to Check Your Phone

The best times to check your phone are:

1. First thing in the morning

2. After you have completed a task, and before you start a new one

3. At the end of the day

The worst times to check your phone are:

1. When you are in the middle of tasks

2. During conference calls

3. During face to face meetings, business meals