May 25, 2017 | Cardsmith, Productivity, Project management, Strategy, Thinking tools, Work
I have a confession to make. I’m a productivity geek. I love to learn about Lean, Theory of Constraints, Kanban, Agile, Scrum, and all of the hybrids of these out there. But what I love more than any of this is creating and perfecting my own productivity tracking... 
Jan 28, 2016 | Cardsmith, Productivity, Project management, Strategy, Work
If you work as an independent consultant, you understand the challenge of playing two roles at once: consultant and salesperson. It’s a uniquely frustrating cycle. First, you submerge yourself in nonstop selling and networking activity. You keep at it because you know... 
Jan 19, 2016 | Cardsmith, Creativity, Productivity, Project management, Strategy, Things we love, Thinking tools, Uncategorized, Work
Can we all take a second and appreciate that our current reality looks a lot like the future we predicted ever so long ago? A moment in time with actual hoverboards, self-aware robots, and a new (good) Star Wars movie? Yep, the future is now. So why, on a daily basis,... 
Jan 12, 2016 | Portland, Startups, Strategy, Uncategorized, Work
A couple of weeks ago, I discussed using the concept of project milestones in unpredictable creative project like starting a business. This post is a quick follow-up and shout-out to our mentors at TenX in Portland, who have cleverly built a whole program that helps... 
Dec 22, 2015 | Cardsmith, Creativity, Design, Productivity, Products, Project management, Strategy, Thinking tools, Uncategorized, Work
In the first part of this series, I explored using agile project milestones for creative endeavors. In this case, we’re using that term to broadly describe projects that need to be planned and tracked, but perhaps aren’t as concrete or knowable as projects that... 
Dec 15, 2015 | Cardsmith, Productivity, Project management, Strategy, Thinking tools, Uncategorized, Work
At Cardsmith, we spend a lot of time thinking about project management. I’m not just referring to making project management faster, more responsive, and more rewarding. We also reflect on what it means to “manage” a project and, beyond that, how we define and...