How to bring a community to a ruinous end During my fourteen years as a campus minister I saw dozens of faith communities grow, sometimes to hundreds of members, while other groups would atrophy and die. Almost every group starts out with a weekly gathering where members discuss relevant topics and sacred texts. As the group grows their programs get …
In 2003, I would often discuss issues of faith and philosophy with a friend named Jarys. During that time, I was studying at Fuller Theological Seminary and was taking a class with Richard Mouw called Christian Worldview and Contemporary Challenges. As part of that class, I wrote a letter to Jarys (attached). Over the years, I have shared this letter …
I’m currently on a one month work sabbatical called a “recharge.” As I shared on Facebook, I plan to use the month to connect with friends, travel with Jane, exercise, read, pray, reflect, and generally slow down. My hope is that I’ll come out of this time refreshed with renewed energy and vision for many adventures ahead. January 11, 2024 …
This past week, while I was getting my haircut, I shared with my stylist that my son was returning from college for Thanksgiving. “Where is he going to school?” she asked. “The University of Washington” I said proudly. “Good school. what’s he studying?” she said. “Computer science,” I proclaim. “Oh…” she said, a bit concerned. “Aren’t lots of tech workers …
Clear goals and guardrails empower teams to thrive with little guidance. Without clear goals and guardrails constant guidance will be needed. Goals + Guardrails > Guidance To be more precise, but less concise: Goals + Guardrails + strategic Guidance > constant Guidance
BATNA: Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement I ask this question as a way to think about where I take my career and my own sense of contribution. Many of us ask “what’s my BATNA” and “what’s their BATNA” when we negotiate which is fantastic. But there a number of other ways to use these questions outside of negotiation that …
Don’t make presentations fancy. Instead, make them like Costco warehouses in the following ways: This makes for better internal presentations, helping companies and teams: When my team will make a decision after a presentation, I want Costco! Example here. For presentations focused on persuasion, designed to Intrigue, Inspire, or Induce desire… fancy may have a place, but even then, simple …
At Meta, I often train teams how to communicate with Extreme Clarity. For years I’ve had former colleagues request that I bring this training to their company or team. Some amazing colleagues and I adapted the presentation to share externally. Credit to @naomigleit and @guyro for inspiration. Enjoy! Extreme Clarity Training – Google Slides
On March 27, 2023, the New York Times broke my Wordle Solver. Specifically, they added a word not part of the 2,315 possible answers the original game allowed. The new word they added was GUANO, which amused me as a metaphor for introducing an unexpected new word. To account for this change, I’ve updated the code for the solver to …
I created some photos of my family in various styles using Stable Diffusion 1.5 with Dreambooth on Google Colab. Find a good tutorial here.