Keeping Remote Teams Engaged

I didn’t start out as a founder. I started out as an arms dealer. Not in the literal sense — but in the early days of Silicon Valley, I was on the front lines of sales, business development, and corporate development. I knew how to close deals, spot trends, and move fast. I was valuable but always on the periphery of the real action. I was building. I watched teams turn ideas into companies and products into platforms. After a while, it became clear — I was contributing but not creating. So I made a move. I joined Ooma as a founding executive. We set out to reinvent home phone service and take on the telcos. It was bold and ambitious and taught me what zero to one reall…

WITH THE SUPER BOWL around the corner, what can business leaders learn from elite athletes about high-level performance? Be like Roger. And Michael. And Simone. And Usain. And many others. That’s key advice for business leaders seeking to improve their impact and excel in a sustainable, long-term way that’s good for them and everyone around them. The Roger, in this case, is none other than Roger Federer, the tennis legend considered an exemplar of athleticism and sportsmanship. But underlying Federer’s and other top athletes’ outsized success is rigorous devotion to routines and practices that optimize their state of mind and body for high-level performance. This mat…

OUR internal conversations may seem inconsequential, but they determine the success of every interaction. They hold secrets to how we can have authentic conversations with others. When CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently testified before the Senate regarding the breach of security using Signal’s group chat during an attack on Yemen, their carefully measured responses revealed something profound. As they faced direct questions about the Signal chat, including an accidental text that included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, viewers witnessed a rare moment when the divide between Ratcliffe and Gabbard’s…

MOST business leaders assume that if they roll out the right strategy, success will follow. But the truth is, even the best strategy will fail without full buy-in from your team. Lack of buy-in is the silent killer of growth. It’s why so many marketing initiatives fall flat, why sales teams resist new processes, and why companies struggle to implement real change. If your employees aren’t aligned, your customers will feel it. And if your customers feel it, they won’t trust you. The Real Reason Strategies Fail The biggest mistake CEOs make is assuming that once they decide on a direction, their team will automatically follow. But people don’t resist change because they’…