Best of Kellblog 2015

Here’s a quick post to highlight some of my top blogs in 2015 — just in case you missed any of them.

• Managing the Fundamental Tension in Marketing, which addresses the key question of how to balance “what we want to say” versus “what they want to hear.”

• A Disney Parking Lot Attendant Gets More Training than Your $250K Enterprise Software Rep.  How and why you should invest in building a great on-boarding program.

• What It Really Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP, which answers a question I’ve been asked countless times and which is deceptively difficult to answer.

• Conflict Avoidance Causes Conflict.  In a Valley full of well meaning math nerds, conflict avoidance is both built-in and, perversely, an enormous conflict generator.

• The Curse of the Megaround and its sequel about Expectations and Power.  While companies are quick to celebrate huge rounds at high valuations, they can spell future disaster for the executive team and common shareholders.

• Simplifiers Go Far, Complexifiers Get Stuck.   If you want to rise in management, learn to be a simplifier.

• Stop Making the #1 Mistake in Presentations, which is starting with what you have as opposed to thinking about your audience.

• I Don’t Want to Talk to You Anymore.  Probably the best post of the year — which encourages managers to listen to their gut when it comes to working with their direct reports.

• I’ll Get it to You Tomorrow:  Six Words that Can Make or Break Your Credibility.  If you say it, do it.  Otherwise, don’t say it.

• The Perils of Measuring a SaaS Business on TCV, which discusses why SaaS businesses should use ARR as their primary metric and why TCV should be looked on with a skeptical eye.

• The Great Reckoning:  Thoughts on the Deflation of Technology Bubble 2.0.  The title says it all.

Thanks, as always, for your readership and support and Happy New Year to all.

Best,
Dave