Christian Bonilla
How Smart Teams Fail

One of the weirder experiences most of us can relate to is being in a meeting where nearly all of the participants disagree with the decision being made, but the power dynamics keep anyone in the room from objecting. It’s never a great feeling, and it seems to happen for a few different reasons

How Smart Teams Fail
success
Christian Bonilla
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone and Embrace ...

I'm not one to extol the virtues of failure. I get annoyed whenever people talk about “celebrating failure.” That said, there are some benefits to getting your ass handed to you every once in a blue moon.

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone and Embrace Criticism
Christian Bonilla
The Golden Rule of Software Companies

Great products and bad products both reflect the management teams who are responsible for them.

The Golden Rule of Software Companies
Christian Bonilla
Pivoting Ain't Easy

Investing time, money and energy into a strategy, only to have the market not respond is like taking a punch. You might not get knocked out, but the effect of multiple blows can take a toll on your confidence and enthusiasm. 

Pivoting Ain't Easy
Christian Bonilla
Bon Voyage! Here Are Two Business Ideas that ...

I nearly scrapped this column, because they’re not bad ideas per se. Both are still in fashion today, especially in the startup-o-sphere, and like many popular ideas there's more than a grain of truth to them. But these two ideas have run themselves ragged, and I see them doing more harm than good when I encounter them. 

Bon Voyage! Here Are Two Business Ideas that Need to Die

Five Ways to Tell if Your Project Is in Serious Trouble

Five Ways to Tell if Your Project Is in Serious Trouble

As long as you’re observing from a safe distance, business failures can be incredibly interesting. Many of the business books I’ve found the most enjoyable and instructive have been about failures: When Genius Failed (Long Term Capital Management), Conspiracy of Fools (Enron), and How Markets Fail (numerous financial institutions) are a few of my favorites that break down catastrophic failures in compelling detail. And despite the carnage wrought by some of these blowups, I find the narratives comforting in a way. After all, if your idea, product, or business fails, at least you’re in good company.

Words to Live By - Overlooked Lessons from Great Business Thinkers

Words to Live By - Overlooked Lessons from Great Business Thinkers

I’ve probably singled out thousands of little concepts, quotes, and anecdotes over the years that have shaped how I think about things and surely shaped the way I write. Interestingly, the ones that have stuck with me the most are often tangential to the main thrust of the book. As I was reading Peter Thiel’s Zero to One (which earned its’ share of margin notes), I thought it might be interesting to share a few of the things I’ve come across in my reading which I suspect many overlooked in these books. And so, from my bookshelf to yours, here they are (with links to Amazon titles where applicable):

Keep Calm and Treat Outliers with Care

Keep Calm and Treat Outliers with Care

Outliers -- observations that are few in number but disproportionately affect your analysis -- can create headaches when we face time pressure to make decisions. Maybe it’s the lone beta tester who gives you brutal feedback about a product feature that you no longer have time to change. Or maybe it’s the tiny new cluster of data points that make your pretty financial model all of sudden look hideous. Whatever form they take, outlier observations force us to make critical decisions about how much we should weigh their significance...

How to Deal with Bad Software You Have to Use Anyway

How to Deal with Bad Software You Have to Use Anyway

Excluding all of the tools I use to maintain my website and do my email and social marketing, I think I can function in my professional life with just twenty-five tools. Pause for a moment and count the number of different products you use just to capture, organize, analyze, and transmit information. Now add in the administrative tools and the ones that are highly specific to your job function, and I bet you’ll have a number not very different from mine, if not higher. Some of them you choose to use, and some of them you have to use. I want to focus on this latter, because here is where you’re likely to encounter tools that get in the way of doing your job. Frustrating though it is, broken processes and clumsy tools are opportunities to make your company better...

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