Chris Knudsen on Life & Business

Jason Calacanis wrote a blog post that created a firestorm on the Web. On the important stuff he’s right on. Here are my thoughts:

“Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department.” Come on, Jason - Macs break down too. Plus, I’m way more productive on a PC - so are most other people.
“Buy a [...]

I indicated in another post that I was going to tackle the eternal question of whether one should get an MBA or not. Sorry for the long post but I hope it helps those of you who have been wondering. Here it goes…
My Story
I graduated from UVSC with an undergrad in business. I had attended BYU but ended [...]

 

If you go looking for trouble then you’re going to find it.
Don’t walk into a conflict with a predetermined conclusion.
Get rid of people who are looking for reasons to be offended and poison the well.
Don’t give positive reinforcement to negative behavior.
Don’t be a Jerk. There is more power and respect in nice.
Be and act like a [...]

 

Try to learn from what happened.
Understand what happened and how to deal with it in the future.
Develop lessons from failures and pass them on.
Empathize with your customers and your competitors.
Always consider the consequences of your actions before you act.
Risk does not mean you should not act.
Allow people to save face when they’ve made mistakes they’re [...]

Last week was tough. It involved a lot of follow up, email, voicemail, etc. I was more than glad to hit Friday. A lot my frustrations stem from me feeling some of the basic fundamentals of business courtesy and communication have been forgotten. Here are some of my thoughts:

Try to return email within 24 hours. Disregard this suggestion if [...]

I used to be one of those guys who thought that if you put in long hours, got lots of email and had numerous people reporting to you then you were important and worked hard. It wasn’t until I got into one of those positions that I realized that being in middle management is no different [...]

Devin Thorpe posted a great commentary the other day on how people can change. I highly encourage you to read it. Thanks, Devin for inspiring this post.
People can and do change. Change comes intentionally and unintentionally. Change comes with age. I know that I am a very different person now compared to when I was 18. Marriage changes [...]

The success of any one business is rarely attributable to the sole efforts of one individual. This why I have such a problem with the many so called “entrepreneur of the whatever” awards.  Usually these awards are given to one person, the CEO, in recognition of his great efforts in making his business a success. I am [...]

Guy Kawasaki has a great post this morning on the Lies of Engineers.  Here’s lie number eight: 
“‘We can do this faster, cheaper, and better with an offshore programming team in India.’  Rank and file engineers usually don’t tell this lie; it’s the CTO who does. Somehow we’ve got it in our heads that every programmer [...]

Hire the right people for the job and then trust them to make the right decisions.