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Task Paralysis: Overcoming the ‘too many tasks’ problem
Task Paralysis occurs when you have so many things that need to be done right no »
Meetings 101 – Every meeting you ever go to sucks
Make your meetings the talk of the company with these ideas.

Black Swans: Are you ready for Doppelgänger Week on Facebook?

Posted February 11th, 2010 by RickMeasham

Let’s imagine your development department is the Facebook development department. You started this cool site in PHP in your college dorm, and it became big. Scratch that, it became huge.

So your poor developers have had to take your PHP code and make it scale to enourmous proportions. But we all know you can’t do everything at once. You pick something and you work on it.

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Communication: When it fails, who is to blame?

Posted January 26th, 2010 by RickMeasham

A friend on Twitter asks “If someone doesn’t understand you, is it their error or your own?” It’s an interesting question, one I couldn’t answer in 140 characters. Read on for my thoughts on willing, hostile and distracted listeners.

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Occam’s Razor vs Everything You Know

Posted January 25th, 2010 by RickMeasham

Assume that a coin is fair, i.e., has an equal probability of coming up heads or tails when flipped. I flip it ninety-nine times and get heads each time. What are the odds of my getting tails on my next throw?

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Google and how it affects your job application

Posted November 23rd, 2009 by RickMeasham

Google is one of my primary tools when screening candidates for a position. While a resume and cover letter are useful in telling me what an applicant wants me to know, Google will tell me about who they are when they’re not applying for a job.

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The Art of Delegation — 16 things I learned from Shaun the Sheep

Posted November 18th, 2009 by RickMeasham

There are important lessons hidden in the delights of children’s television. Today it’s from Aardman Animation’s fantastic Shaun the Sheep. Watch the video, what do you get out of it? Let me know!

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Isn’t that a pip? Three lessons learned from Children’s Television

Posted October 14th, 2009 by RickMeasham

“Don’t worry Iggle Piggle! It’s only a Tiddle!” says (Sir) Derek Jacobi from my television set. My wife and I are watching our nightly episode of the fantastic In The Night Garden with out 20 month-old. Iggle Piggle (pictured) has just discovered a stream of water fountaining out of the ground.

Read the three lessons I learned: For Leaders, For Entrepreneurs and For Teachers

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Are you Captain of the Club or just the team?

Posted September 19th, 2009 by RickMeasham

It’s September in Melbourne. That means football (Australian Rules). We’re just a week off the Grand Final when over 100,000 people will pack into the MCG, the biggest stadium in Australia to watch the game. Millions more will watch from home. This event is so big that every sewerage worker is either at work on on call for the start of the half-time break when almost the entire population flushes the toilet at the exact same instant.

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9 lessons someone else learned from rock climbing

Posted September 9th, 2009 by RickMeasham

Watch Matthew Childs’ TED Talk on 9 live lessons from Rock Climbing. The take-home is left to you.
1. Don’t let go
2. Hesitation is bad.
3. Have a plan.
4. You have to be able to complete each individual move.
5. Know how to rest.
6. Fear really sucks because what it means is you’re not focusing on what you’re doing.
7. Don’t take it straight on. Don’t follow the most obvious solution.
8. Strength doesn’t always equal success.
9. Plan for a fall. Once you get to that point where you know it’s going to happen, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to let go.

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What job do you want?

Posted September 7th, 2009 by RickMeasham

A Twitter acquaintance recently tweeted that she was going for a job interview. The company I work for had an opening on the service desk so I wondered what sort of work she was looking for. “I don’t know, but I’m sure it will be awesome,” she replied. Her answer was wrong, very wrong.

Read on to find out why she was wrong, and how you should answer the same question.

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Hire the best, even if they know nothing

Posted August 31st, 2009 by RickMeasham

Recently I hired two new developers and went through the interview process. One of the interviewees didn’t know the language he was about to start writing code in. He got the job. I gave him the job because he was the best person for the job. And time has proven me right.

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