Ownership doesn’t scale on intent alone. It scales when decision rights are deliberately designed, reinforced, and protected.
When decision rights are clear, leaders, managers, and teams move forward with efficiency and confidence. When they aren’t, we’re left amidst the turmoil of lack of ownership and leaders becoming bottlenecks without ever intending to…
Read MoreClarity + Ownership = Pressure-Tested Execution.
Let’s dig in… from the last post, clarity is the start. In this post, I posit why ownership is the requisite.
In organizations where ownership is vague or unconfirmed, early signs appear quickly. Signs such as hesitation, waiting, unnecessary escalation, avoidance, and constantly shifting paths. Left unaddressed, those early indicators almost always turn into full ownership failure and inefficient execution — especially once pressure increases across organizations.
Read MoreWhen execution slows, it’s rarely a motivation or effort problem. It’s almost always a clarity and accountability problem.
Leaders carry context others don’t. When priorities, ownership, decision rights, and “what good looks like” aren’t explicit, teams fill in the gaps differently—and work stalls.
Read MoreBack in 2013, I co-founded One Spark, which became the world’s largest crowdfunding festival. It was wild, experimental, and beautifully chaotic—in all the right ways. At its peak, it brought over 350,000 people into downtown Jacksonville and…
Read MoreManufactured goods are in short supply these days, with pent-up demand surging and the U.S. economy reopening amidst a struggling global supply chain that continues to be put under tremendous strain. The Institute for Supply Management recently reported a 37-year high in its index of national factory activity, signaling a boom for the sector and economy.
Read MoreI've been heads down for a while working on scaling a tangible goods venture and settling in to Seattle with my wife. The outdoors here are amazing and so far the community has been very welcoming on all fronts. All this said, there's something on my mind this afternoon as I continue to reach out to hundreds of folks through LinkedIn and via email... the impact that AI will have on language and how we, as humans, communicate. So, I thought I'd put some quick words in digital form in sort of a stream of conscious way as it's been a while since my last post.
Read MoreAs humans, it is in our nature to search for things that we believe in. That's what calls us to organized belief systems like being a sports fan, joining a running group, or even religion. We yearn for the answer to constant questions of worth, value and hope and many times those questions and trying to provide answers to them are what calls a founder into creating a new startup. This comes from motivation and not discipline. In fact, the very definition of discipline is something that we are misguided by...
Read MoreRecently, I wrote a post about the launch of Prota Ventures, a venture building and early-stage investment firm. We've been hard at work on a number of items and dogfooding our own products (someone should come up with a better name for this) each week along the way. One that you can check out is MapleIQ. Need an intelligent, interactive, customer-focused landing page? This is the one for you.
One that I've been using nearly daily for the past seven weeks is Startup Rocket. During this time, I've been involved with everything from a hardware startup (making metal hairpin legs, more on that later) to helping about a half-dozen founders/pre-funded and pre-product teams work through their individual ideas while evaluating the steps of Startup Rocket along the way. We added in a few more features and steps to the framework to help take founders all the way from an idea through closing a first round of funding (if that's the path they choose to pursue; we've seen the framework also work for those bootstrapping or growing organically). Additionally, you can now see all of our current articles on the steps for launching a Tech Startup online at startuprocket.com/articles.
So, why write a post about this? Well, first - I committed to blog more, so am keeping up with that. Second, I've made a ton of notes throughout the past six weeks about why/how I find Startup Rocket valuable when working through the steps of launching a new idea.
Read MoreI'm excited today.
As an entrepreneur, most of us get a feeling when we're about to dive head first into a new journey. The feeling that you get when you're excited and nervous all at the same time. That feeling that can be described as the quiet sense of calm anxiety before the rollercoaster lets loose and the drop begins with ever-increasing speed and screams of excitement and fear begin. Yes, that's the feeling this morning as the next chapter gets underway.
Read MoreIn January I left the helm of one of the companies that I co-founded and was fortunate enough to grow for three years, One Spark. To me, the blessing of One Spark has always been demonstrated most through the amazing talent of people that were brought together (employees, volunteers, creators, city members, investors, students and so many more) supporting a single mission: to help people with great ideas get connected to the resources they need. We attacked the pain head on by creating what turned into the world's largest crowdfunding festival, but more importantly for our city and beyond - a movement that inspired thousands to create.
During those same few years, I also founded other businesses, advised dozens of startups, traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, met my wife, got married, spoke at conferences, gave a TEDx talk in Frankfurt, did hundreds of media interviews, completed an ironman distance triathlon (but not the blog), a couple half-iron distance races, moved three times, ran a few marathons and ultimately exhausted myself. I can still feel the physical and emotional ailments again just writing that list. Fortunately, my wife encouraged me to take a couple of months off before diving back in to any new entrepreneurial ventures. For that, I'm...
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