So, I have been in social situations with fellow managers and have brought up the topic of group development and the model of ‘storming, norming, and performing,’ and no one knew what I was talking about.  So I figure it’s a fun topic to blog about. ModCloth has been growing our San Francisco presence very rapidly.  When I first got here in March, it was just me.  Literally.  Today, about 3 months later, we now → Read More

Why ‘Work-Life Balance’ is a bad phrase We’ve been talking a lot lately about building a great business that endures here at ModCloth over the last several months.  One of the phrases that often comes up in this context is “work-life balance.’  The more I think about the phrase, the more I realize that it is framed incorrectly.  It drives people towards an unhealthy way of thinking.  So we should change it. When I search → Read More

As our business continues to expand, we have been facing some interesting new challenges and opportunities.  One that has been on my mind a lot lately is cross-site collaboration.  But no good solutions exist that enable us to feel a little bit more like we are in the same room.   I am tired of seeing startups attack geeky problems that no one cares about.  Virtual team communication tools pose a problem for a lot of → Read More

Ok, so in my last post on the subject, I outlined the core problem surrounding mentorship and management in most businesses today.   This problem is seen everywhere from startups to bigger companies, but is probably most prevalent at larger organizations.  The core problem, succinctly summarized, is: management and mentorship are separate things that require different skills and experiences most companies make the mistake of likening the two and assuming they are one growth path companies → Read More

A surprising number of companies get management completely wrong.  So many companies, in fact, that I hesitate to write this post because I wonder if I am going to be giving away some sort of secret that no one in the ‘corporate world’ seems to know. The problem that I have seen in most organizational structures is what I call a ‘management bias.’   In order to understand the problem, we must examine the ways that → Read More