A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jason Jones of CresaPartners, who hosts a podcast called “Battlefield to Business” for Business-to-Business Magazine.  If you don’t know Jason, he’s a great guy, and a former naval aviator who served on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise.

We had a great candid chat about how my personal military experience translated into the business world, specifically the world of fast-growth startups.  We covered a variety of different aspects of startups, ranging from team building, cross-pollination, culture, problem-solving, hiring employees, risk taking, leadership, and the applicability of small unit tactics. I shared some stories not only from my Army days, but also anecdotes from my day job as well as other tidbits from throughout my professional career.

Thanks to Jason for the opportunity to hang out and share my perspectives on a subject that is near and dear to my heart.

It was great fun, and hopefully some folks will find some value in my ramblings. I will admit, having now done nearly 40 podcasts for StartupLounge.com, it felt very different being on the other side of the microphone – good fun, though …

You can listen to the podcast here on their site, or locally using the embedded flash player below.

Cheers.

Thanks to Scott for allowing me to “guest blog”.

I’d like to note and comment on the passing of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the first President of the Russian Federation, and a key architect in the destruction of Communism and the ending of the Cold War.

Mr. Yeltsin was as responsible or more than Mikhail Gorbachev for the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In 1991, it was Yeltsin who, as the President of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, gathered the leadership of the Ukrainian S.S.R. and the Byelorussian S.S.R. and formally dissolved the Soviet Union from within. Gorbachev only resigned about three weeks later when he no longer had a country to preside over.

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Too many people place an emphasis these days on retained knowledge. This is especially prevalent within technical fields. Computer programmers are often asked to recite arcane utterings of alphabet soup during job interviews. This isn’t important. What is important, however, is simply knowing where to find the right answers.

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I am not one who generally looks back and reflects too much on my past mistakes. Well, I reflect upon them, but I don’t dwell on them. Admitting one’s professional mistakes, and coming to terms with them, is part of the evolutionary process of each of our careers.

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I recently discovered what appears to be the beginnings of a new trend in hiring practices. It is called “five minute jobbing”, and is essentially the marriage of so-called “speed dating” with job interviews. Suffice it to say, it piqued my curiosity, so I decided to look into it.

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In my chosen field of technology startups, I am accustomed to working with diverse teams. These teams tend to work together over protracted periods of time (often measured in blocks of 18 hour stretches!). In order to assist in building team cohesiveness, I formulated what I call my circle theory of hiring.

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The other day I found myself, as usual, plugging away on my laptop at my local Starbuck’s. A young lady sat near me interviewing a young man for a job as a salesperson at the EB Games (a video game shop) next door. I thought it might be interesting to capture bits of their conversation, in an effort to provide some critical analysis of it here in my blog (yes, I’m bored).

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