Davin's blog

Category: Management

  • Better Year Over Year Line Graphs Using Time as a Visual Metaphor

    Have you ever seen a line chart that shows monthly revenues, or some other number, and compares this year to last year to the year before and so on? You know, the one with lines the color of a gumball variety pack? (This is a random dataset for illustration, so don’t look at it too…

  • 3 Quotes on leadership from Plutarch’s essay “To an uneducated leader”

    I’m sharing these notes to encourage you, reader, to read To an Uneducated Leader by Plutarch. My copy is in the book “How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership,” by Plutarch, selected, translated, and introduced by Jeffrey Beneker. The quotes that follow are from that edition. It took me perhaps 10…

  • A Method for Coaching for Performance at Work

    Once upon a time, in a company in a far off land, there was a User Experience team led by Alice. Alice was mentoring Bob, a design researcher who was only a couple of years into the field. Bob had been working hard in preparation for a presentation of the latest round of research, and…

  • Sportsmen’s Clubs: On Bylaws, Officers, and Directors

    Sportsmen’s/Conservation Clubs are typically short 3 key officer roles: Steward, Membership Director, and Events Director. The common-sense reality of such clubs demands that these responsibilities are filled, but because they aren’t defined in bylaws, the existing officers often have to juggle to make sure the work is covered. Particularly for volunteer-run groups, this is far…

  • Musk’s madness with Twitter: a rationale

    Musk bought a really expensive asset in Twitter that is losing horrible amounts of money (making it a net liability, actually) and he has to renovate it to be cashflow positive—the alternatives of letting it continue on its broken path or actually ending it as a company or far too expensive to be realistic.

  • Budgeting for UX Managers

    Budgeting for UX is a conflict of mental models: Ours and Accounting’s. If we start with Accounting’s model, we’re more likely to make mistakes. So, do the version that makes sense first, and then reformulate it for Accounting’s needs.

  • Covenant Eyes on Inc. 5000 for the 6th time since 2010

    I’m happy to share the news that Covenant Eyes, Inc. made position 3674 on the 2016 Inc. 5000 list, showing an 85% growth in revenue over the past 3 years. What’s even better is that this is our 6th time on the Inc. 5000 since 2010. A one-time listing might be a fluke, but 6 times in…

  • Organizational Physics OmniGraffle Stencil

    Here’s an OmniGraffle stencil based on Lex Sisney’s Organizational Physics.

  • Does design precede strategy?

    More than any other type of worker, earnest designers and design researchers wrangle with real strategy formulation, often blazing a trail for a company and its management.

  • Five-Time Inc. 5000 Honoree: Covenant Eyes

    While I don’t often write about work on my blog, I’m happy to share the news that Covenant Eyes made the Inc. 5000 list again this year, now having made it 5 times since 2010. Congratulations Covenant Eyes on pursuing your worthy mission with successful business practices! And while not an official award, Glassdoor.com shows…