Category Archives: ExecCatalyst Blog

“All’s Fair in Love and War.” “Good news!” is what she said to me on the phone. She timed it while I was traveling, so it would be harder for me to react to what I saw as yet another attempt at professional sabotage. Over the years, I had become very suspicious of her because of “honest mistakes” that either hurt me politically, helped her, or both. This one ...

The Proverbial “Love-Hate” Relationship. Very early in my career, I was a technical support engineer and was pretty good at it. In fact, many colleagues asked me “You’re great with customers. Why aren’t you in Sales?” I would quip “Well, I have to sleep with myself at night.” You see, in my profession, I was dealing with all the problems that badsales people created e.g. wrong expectations about what ...

“I’ll Do Whatever it Takes.” I’ve never been a “not my job” kind of person, whether I was a front-line technical services professional at Oracle or a VP at a billion dollar software company like Business Objects. If the team had a job to do, and if I needed to stretch outside of my basic job description to help get the job done, I’d gladly do it. Moreover, I ...