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This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Currently Reading

Daily Reading from May 31, 2008

Links to what I’ve been reading recently.

  • Twitter, or Architecture Will Not Save You - Laughing Meme — "Architectures that strip down Twitter to queues, and logs could be a huge win, and while thinking about new architectures is the sexy, hard problem we all want to fix, Twitter’s problems are really of a more pedestrian hard, plumbing ..."
  • The Many Challenges of Corporate Blogging — "We should try to be unbiased when it comes to social media, point out the good and the bad, this is one post in my ‘challenges‘ category, read the others, it’s important. With there being so many social media zealots ..."
  • Adam was apparently bored...
  • Governance Rules Learned with our Kids — "Having children is something that changes you. Priorities that seem crucial before you have kids don’t loom as large after. The further I got into parenting (and supervising people) the more I recognized that I needed to adjust my attitude ..."
  • Taking Risk and Mitigating Risk — "When I think about the venture capital business, I think about risk. It’s one of the riskiest investment types there is. But as they teach you in business school, risk and return are highly correlated over the long haul. What ..."
  • Understanding Community Leadership: An Interview with a Member of Yelp’s “Elite” — Ellen M is one of Yelp’s premiere members called Yelp Elite, they are unpaid members that after meeting some requirements are considered “elite”. It’s often baffling for outsiders to understand how community leadership forms, but it’s often not because ...

Recently Written

VC’s Future Lies In Building Winners
Jun 21: AI and megafunds are about to kill the traditional venture model, forcing smaller VCs to stop hunting for hidden gems and start rolling up their sleeves to fix broken companies instead.
Should individual people have OKRs?
May 14: A good OKR describes and measures an outcome, but it can be challenging to create an outcome-focused OKR for an individual.
10 OKR traps and how to avoid them
May 8: I’ve helped lots of teams implement OKRs or fix a broken OKR process. Here are the 10 most common problems I see, and what to do instead.
AI is Smart, But Wisdom Requires Judgement
May 3: AI can process data at lightning speed, but wisdom comes from human judgment—picking the best imperfect option when facts alone don’t point the way.
Decoding Product Leadership Titles
Mar 18: Not all product leadership titles mean what they sound like. ‘Head of Product’ can mean anything from a senior PM to a true VP. Here’s how to tell the difference.
What branding can teach about culture
Jan 8: Culture is your company’s point of view in action—a framework guiding behavior, even in the unknown. You can’t copy it; it must reflect your unique perspective.
Think Systems, not Symptoms
Dec 15: Piecemeal process creation frustrates teams and slows work. Stop patching problems and start solving systems. Adopting a systems thinking approach helps you design processes that are efficient, aligned with goals, and truly add value.
Your Policies Aren’t Your Culture
Dec 13: Policies guide behavior, but culture is the lived norms and values of your team. Policies reflect culture -- they don’t define it. Netflix’s parental leave shift didn’t change its culture of freedom and responsibility. It clarified how to live it.

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What I'm Reading