Management
54 articlesThe Power Playbook: Decoding Leadership Dynamics in OpenAI’s Executive Announcement
The Meta-Strategy: Controlling the Narrative In the high-stakes world of AI leadership, those who control the narrative control reality itself. A recent pr...
Why I Stopped Chasing ‘High Risk, High Reward’ and You Should Too
As someone who's spent years in the trenches of entrepreneurship and corporate leadership, I've had my fair share of encounters with the age-old mantra: "...
Facilitating Team Communication by AI Prompting Humans! Introducing Daily Team Sync
In the ever-evolving landscape of remote work, maintaining team cohesion and productivity can be a challenge. As someone who's led distributed teams across...
The Evolution of the 50/25 Meeting Format: Why Starting Late is the New On-Time
Introduction: An Updated Perspective on Time Management In a continuous quest to boost workplace effectiveness, it's useful to revisit our approaches. Ten ...
Project Estimation with T-Shirt Sizing & Evidence Based Scheduling Models for Scrum Teams
Introduction "How long will this project take?" and "How much will it cost?" — two questions that can strike fear into the hearts of even the most se...
You Are What You Risk by Michele Wucker (Book Review)
Michele Wucker's book "You Are What You Risk: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World" offers a deep dive into the world of personal ris...
Jason Patterson, Software Engineer at Instagram at Facebook
Jason Patterson shared this recommendation for Rajiv on November 25, 2019 via LinkedIn: I worked with Rajiv as Director of Mobile Technology at The Wall St...
Activities, Outputs, and Outcomes — A framework for your job
This is a framework for understanding, describing, and actually performing your job in a way that creates real value. After years of watching talented peop...
An Example of Respectfully Declining a Meeting at Work That is Already in Your Calendar
Here is an example of how to respectfully decline a meeting to make time to work on a higher priority. We occasionally find ourselves in meetings when our ...
Management & Technical Career Growth Tracks (v3)
In follow-up to earlier work on a) versions one and two of these technical and related career tracks, b) pathways for career development in product enginee...
How do you launch a suite of Mobile, Web, and Voice products from ideation to go live in 12 weeks?
Check out the blog post by Very, the product development partner I worked with in my previous job at Thrive Global to design, build and launch multiple Mob...
How to be an effective CTO
A CTO's job combines Culture, Technology, and Operations. Each of the three is necessary; a field of knowledge, experimentation, and learning in itself; an...
90 Day Plan for a CTO in a New Job
Starting as a CTO in a new organization is like conducting an orchestra you've never heard before. You need to understand the musicians, learn the repertoi...
7 minus 1 reasons why technology/engineering teams should work on projects
Here are 6 reasons that should be used to justify, prioritize and classify projects engineering teams work on. The 7th item is not a valid reason to be use...
Cyber Resilience Towards the Quantification of Cyber Security Threats
The World Economic Forum and its partners have developed and shared a way for organizations to calculate the impact of cyber security threats. The framewor...
Dear Makers, On Fridays My Office is Yours — An Experiment
Some senior leaders choose to work alongside their teams in cubicles, eschewing private office rooms. New York City’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg is an ...
Tony Landa, Associate Director of Technology, The Studio at Conde Nast
Tony Landa shared this recommendation for Rajiv on August 25, 2014 via LinkedIn: Rajiv is one of the most trustworthy individuals that I've met in my profe...
3 Dimensions of a Technology Team
Organizing Software Engineering Teams to Balance Products, Partners & Professions This organizational design for a technology department aims to optimally ...
3 Roles of a CTO: Culture. Technology. Operations.
This is a guide for CTOs, VPs of Software Engineering and other technology managers responsible for a software engineering organization. The purpose of thi...
3-5-7 Meeting Format for Weekly Staff Meetings
If you are the manager of a team of people at your job, here is a format we suggest for running your staff meetings. We call it the 3-5-7 format because of...
Posted Signs for Productive Meetings
You can post these slides as signs in your meeting rooms and offices or include them at the start of your presentations. You can also open the original Goo...
Template For Requesting an Outcome-Focused Meeting
Most meetings are wasteful because they're organized around what people will discuss rather than what they will accomplish. "Let's meet to talk about the ...
Templates for Replying to Meeting Requests & Polite Ways to Decline Meetings
By default, we should only attend meetings where we are active participants, not passive attendees with not much to contribute to the desired outcome of th...
When to have and when not to schedule meetings
Companies should, by default, avoid scheduling meetings that start before 10am or end after 5pm. If an employee comes to the office at 8am on some days, it...
50/25 Meeting Format
Update (2023 September 17): I published an update to this system based on data, experience, and the advice of colleagues. If you manage a team, value your ...
Using Laptops or Smartphones in Meetings
Using smartphones — or worse, laptops — during in-person meetings diminishes productivity, is disrespectful to others and decreases your brainpower. Yes, s...
Maker’s Schedule (For Managers Too)
The following memo from a department head to staff is an example of how to implement a productive maker's schedule at your workplace. This approach recomme...
HR Classification and Discretionary/Business Job Titles for Makers, Managers and Leaders in Technology
This article presents an organization system and policy for job titles of maker, manager and leader roles in technology staffs. Separate job titles for HR ...
Bane Hunter, Executive Director, Project Management, Conde Nast
Bane Hunter shared this recommendation for Rajiv on February 16, 2013 via LinkedIn: I had the pleasure of working with Rajiv during his tenure as an execut...
Case for a Consistent, Comprehensible & Cost-Effective Vacation Policy
This article makes a case for having a vacation policy that is simple, sane and standard across the organization. Some organizations have unnecessarily com...
Product Maintenance vs. New Development on Web Sites, Mobile Apps and Other Digital Products
Maintenance of a digital business product (e.g. a Web site, mobile app, or software) refers to the work that includes modifications made after delivery to ...
Management & Technical Career Growth Tracks (v2)
This second version of the diagram illustrating technical career tracks reflects the following updates since version one: A product management track is now...
Productive Business Meetings
Here are some suggestions for making business meetings more productive, efficient and effective. Based on readers' feedback, I have split this article into...
A Memo on Leadership by a Colleague
I regularly ask other people for their advice, insights and knowledge about leadership and management. The following is a memo a colleague recently wrote f...
Organizing a Digital Technology Department in a Media Company By Functional Areas
This article presents a system to organize your digital technology department in a media company. It is written for a CTO, CIO or EVP Technology looking fo...
Confidence in Leaders & Managers and Their Performance: Reinforcing Loop
When stakeholders, executives and team members have confidence in the abilities of a leader/manager, it results in their lending greater support to that le...
Some Pathways for Career Development in a Product Engineering Organization
The diagram below illustrates some pathways for career development in an engineering-focussed product development organization. It shows an organization wh...
Trinity Method of Technology Management
In the Trinity Method of Technology Management, tasks and responsibilities are categorized under three types of roles: Creator, Guardian and Recycler. If y...
CAREER-CLEAR: An Employee Evaluation and Career Development System
CAREER-CLEAR is a system for doing fair, consistent and constructive employee performance evaluations and determining employee rank, title and compensation...
Hosting Large-Scale Web Sites: Contract Review Guide for the CTO
Introduction: Why Web Hosting Contracts Matter In today's digital economy, your website isn't just a marketing channel—it's the backbone of your business. ...
Checklist for Migration of Web Application from Traditional Hosting to Cloud
In 2010, Cloud Computing is likely to see increasing adoption. Migrating Web applications from one data center to another is a complex project. To assist y...
Video Technology: Eye on the Future hosted by The Center for Communication
Rajiv spoke at the seminar titled Video Technology: Eye on the Future hosted by The Center for Communication (cencom.org). The Center for Communication is ...
Save Money On Hosting & CDN By Optimizing Your Architecture & Applications
If you manage technology for a company that has a large Web presence, it is likely that a large percentage of your total technology costs is spent on the W...
Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
For an executive, having a management team of people who are good at their jobs and work well with each other is one of the most important factors that lea...
Management Tip: Thank Your Employees For Jobs Well Done
If you supervise employees or are in a senior position relative to some others, make it a habit to thank employees when they do a good job. Here are some t...
It is all about Balance
To be effective at anything in life, balance is required Be it personal life, leadership, management, technical work: balance is essential. You need to be ...
Opinion on the Amazon S3 Outage; Checklist for Dealing with Outages
My journalist colleagues at Wired.com published some of my comments related to Amazon S3. ((Silicon Alley Insider and ValleyWag have amusing spins on it. 🙂...
Management & Technical Career Growth Tracks
Described here is one way to enable technologists to grow their careers in your organization while still allowing them to focus on the type of work they ar...
Interviewing By Putting To Work: Evidence-Based Hiring for Superior Results
Originally published April 17, 2007 – Updated and expanded March 17, 2025 Hiring decisions are among the most consequential choices leaders make. A single ...
Shannon Brown, Director of Product Management, Knight Ridder Digital
Shannon Brown shared this recommendation for Rajiv on November 30, 2006 via LinkedIn: Rajiv is a visionary technologist with the ability to communicate and...
Mark Sun, Senior Director of Engineering, McClatchy Interactive
Mark Sun shared this recommendation for Rajiv on November 27, 2006 via LinkedIn: Rajiv is a very resourceful manager. He always able to find supports from ...
The Art and Science of Project Management: Beyond Tools and Techniques
Originally published April 1, 2006 – Revised and expanded March 23, 2025 Starting Early, Not Driving Recklessly Fast In my original 2006 article, I shared ...
What is Leadership?
Victory is not defeating others. Victory is winning others. The three skills that people in an organization have are leading, managing, and working. Every ...
Personal & Business Travel Checklist
This checklist, that I have been using for many years since I was a teenager has now been replaced by my 2024 Personal & Business Travel Checklist. Related...