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I took my first job writing code about 27 years ago. That’s enough time to have led many failed projects. I’ve learned through painful experience not to commit to an ambiguous scope on someone else’s timeline but rather to engage in the tough conversations that acknowledge risk, challenge assumptions, protect the integrity of the team, and trade scope for time. I acknowledge it’s a privilege to challenge bosses. But no one thanks you for failing on their terms. And when it works, you earn trust, foster a healthier space for coworkers, and stand a chance at delivering a meaningful outcome.

I’ve built a budget model that takes revenue and hiring targets and planned spending as inputs. Uses documented assumptions to project growth, income and expenses at the account and department level and used it for our 2023 budget.

I hope I never have to do a big up front annual planning cycle again. We’ve committed to begin rolling 12 month planning with updates on a quarterly basis.

Align is an unhelpful verb unless you’re talking tires. Alignment among people is an outcome and requires more time, empathy, and context than the world allots. Worse it masks power dynamics. Reframe, experiment in small scale, iterate. Learn, allow difference, and keep moving.

Congratulations to Presence, Michael Kellman and all the other Striders in the team.

At Stride, we unlock human potential by engineering better systems. We hope to help build a brighter future for our planet and generations to come.

Those words are great but they mean nothing unless we follow through with our actions.

“We continually learn and implement best practices to put people first and, in turn, help other organizations put people first. “

Does anyone know an expert in equity-based user testing? We’re looking for a partner to work with us to ensure a system we are building for a client serves their target users in Black and Latino communities.

Doing the budget exercise of assigning 2022 actuals to department and our revised chart of accounts. Remembered this illustration from my childhood copy of The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

I best learn a thing by dismantling and building it from the ground up. (Childhood box of loose clock parts aside). I did that with our sales forecast. I’ve done it at a with our P&L. Now I’ll do it with our expense budget.

The time I spend “in a zone” or just hunkering in to get things done only works if I also take quiet time to think through what I essentially need to do and more importantly what important things I’m not going to put off.

It’s easier to glean information from data than it is to alter behavior based on that information. Or maybe not. Maybe they are both —-ing hard. Yeah, that.

Some days I’m challenged to drive from hope and not anxiety or dread. I try to focus on being of service to my co-workers those days. It really helps.