Category: career
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Starting anew
It has been a long time since I’ve written here. But a very dear friend had only one ask for a big milestone birthday — and that was to blog. So, Ma.tt, this one is for you. I think a lot about how much is too much to share on an online forum. There are pictures of…
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Creative “cups of caffeine”
Anyone feeling burnt out? After two years of a pandemic that still rages on, women losing our rights, the economy declining, continued mass shootings, a war in Ukraine, there is just a lot. A lot a lot. I’ve been feeling tingles of burn out lately. I always know when it is here because I…
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Skepticism in Autonomy
I spoke on a panel at the CTF Transportation Forum a few days ago. The panel was titled, “Can we get there from here? Making self-driving technology a reality for California” That seems to be the main question I get over the last decade. Some version of “Will autonomous cars ever happen?” or “is the…
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Enjoyment
A few years ago I was talking with Nilofer Merchant about women in tech and the road we still have in front of us to truly be equal. She had just finished her book The Power of Onlyness. I was telling her that I don’t think the fight is working. I think making diversity and…
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Authenticity
What does authenticity even mean? I once worked with a CEO who would say that the most important attribute they wanted to see in the culture was authenticity. Every time they said it, I would ask, “what do you mean by that? What does an authentic culture look like?” When I google Authentic, the inter…
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A little perspective
This school year has been hard for H, the youngest Waydo. Really hard. COVID started when H was six years old. For him, that entire first year was in isolation. Zoom school with friends and teachers just trying to figure out how to make it through life in a 2-D world. Play dates weren’t a…
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#10%
On every team I lead, inevitably we will do an activity early in our time together where we go through a principles exercise. These are the 5 things that if we follow, success is inevitable. This process takes about two months to do a few exercises, draft the first set of five principles, live them,…
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Owning our Wants makes us better leaders … and humans
How many times do we let what we want go unsaid? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about wants. What do I deeply want? How does owning my wants help my team or my family? When is it selfish? What happens when I don’t share what I want with my team or my…
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Connections
When I was a junior in college, I was waiting tables at the Bozeman Montana Perkins Family Restaurant and Bakery (similar to Denny’s). My favorite shift was the 4pm to 8pm dinner shift. I could get in, capture the dinner rush, and finish up with plenty of time to study or do some engineering homework.…