c o s h r i n k

Acceptance — I used to hate that word. For me it seemed to mean being a passive victim, letting life happen TO you. That is one of the reasons I was drawn to work with start ups — those were people who were willing to take on the hard challenges, to fight for what they [...]

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become” Charles du Bois I have always loved this quote — and never does it mean more to me than it does this week. It seems, as usual, my clients are giving me a gift [...]

Ok, it’s Spring, which may be why the image of a tree came up when I was working with a client last week. The presenting problem was that they weren’t seeing the growth they had hoped would result from some recent activities. I asked them to imagine their company as a tree – look at [...]

Some days I feel like I have the same conversation with client after client — today it was about focus. All came to me with a variation on the story “I/my team/my organization are exhausted — we have been keeping up an extraordinary effort and feeling like we are making no progress”. As they described [...]

2009 was a hard year. Many of the companies I worked with had to take headcount cuts, slow growth, focus on surviving “until times got better”. So now we see the initial signs that things are improving…but I don’t seem to see the flare of new energy and enthusiasm. Why? One of my clients put [...]

Cruising through Twitter I saw a references from a piece by Rajesh Setty on “Why Don’t Smart People Share?” It seemed to be a continuation of my own frequent question — why won’t smart people listen? My conclusion is that we in the high tech world have made being smart a trap. I can hear [...]

Just saw Invictus — there were many wonderful lines from Nelson Mandela, but the one that stuck in my mind as I drove home was “how do we inspire others to greatness?” I think this is the single most difficult task the CEO’s I work with face. Maybe because really trying, putting all your effort [...]

Ken Auletta is his book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It”, quotes Elliott Schrage “One can make the argument that the genes of technological Innovation are frequently in conflict with emotional intelligence. Successful technological innovation is all about disruption. Effective emotional intelligence is all about collaboration…” Perhaps I would add a [...]

Universally, one of the first issues I will be asked to address at a new client is “how do we increase accountability?” In some ways this question ranks up there with “how do we create a culture” or “can we do a teambuilding to create trust” in the list of phrases most likely to make [...]

In the last few months I have heard these words out of the mouths of several of my venture capitalist clients. I always know they mean – at least one person thinks they don’t – probably no one has told the CEO – they’ve never had a direct conversation about what the “right” CEO would [...]