Growing up, I never understood why the person in charge of running a Major League Baseball team was called a “manager” instead of a “coach.” They seemed to do all the things a coach in any another sport would do . . . …

I started mentoring a young product manager who’s super talented: a great communicator, strategic and resourceful. She works at one of those big name tech companies whose products everyone uses — the kind of company that only hires the creme de la creme (and would never hire me because I…

Your kids’ schools are closed indefinitely. Your work has gone fully remote. Now that you’re all in the house, how will you manage to keep it all together? This is a challenging and unprecedented situation to be sure. But many homeschool parents have balanced working from home and have developed…

You might not have known this, but my father spoke Spanish fluently. This was always surprising to people when I was growing up, like when he’d go to Taqueria San Jose in San Francisco to order our favorite steak tacos. He’d walk up to the counter, pause for a second…

Imagine this: you’re trying to solve an incredibly complex, thorny problem for your customers. They’ve told you the solution is to give them A, which is something that you can build pretty easily right now. And they want their problem solved now. But (there’s always a “but,” right?) … you’ve…

I mentor a woman who has great instincts, judgment and ideas. She’s recently been given some feedback that she needs to speak up more in meetings — to assert herself more. The funny thing is, I’ve been in lots of those meetings and have always seen her speak up. …

I spend a lot of time talking to people who have ideas. It’s part of my job, but it’s also something I do just as a hobby. I like riffing and expanding, clarifying and strategizing. I also like giving away my ideas. A friend and I were talking through a…

An amazing thing happened this week. My beloved Golden State Warriors played in the NBA Finals for the first time in 40 years (and they happened to win game 1 in OT). The accomplishment is even more notable because they were led to the best record in the league this…

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time networking and meeting people for informational interviews. A couple of the people I’ve talked to recently have been in similar situations; they’re in careers that they don’t really like and want to do something different, but since they’re so entrenched in their…