Andrew Lisy's Blog

When an organization is still in the small, startup phase, it's not hard to have employees that each feel like they have a stake in the company and are willing to rally behind it. As the company grows, however, subsequent employees get distanced from management and from company success, so it is easier for them to treat the job less like their own undertaking, and more like a paycheck. Too many employees treating their work as just a job will end up affecting company culture and ultimately, product. Identifying and rewarding torchbearers helps to ensure that the cultural message is effectively conveyed and carried out at all ranks.

Read the rest of this post »

Jotted down in a file I keep called "life rules", I have a simple phrase. Create, don't destroy. It sounds trite, and perhaps it is. But I firmly believe that the most successful people in the world follow this principle every day, whether or not they have specifically written it anywhere. While it may not make you rich and famous, if you spend your time creating instead of destroying, it will undoubtedly make your life far better.

What does it mean, "create, don't destroy"? There are countless opportunities every day where we make decisions to add to or subtract from something. Projects at work started by an adversary that you'd rather see fail, cynical observations that don't have any constructive benefit, favors that you could easily do for someone, but choose not to -- these are all chances that we have to build on something, but instead choose to detract from it. There are all sorts of underlying roots -- jealousy, political gain, personal grudges -- but in each case the effort in the task is designed to undermine.

Instead, spend your time improving anything and everything you can. Even if you secretly want a project to fail, put that aside and contribute earnestly. It might feel good or be easy to criticize or be cynical, and often it is. Far more difficult is actually helping out and building. You'll find, however, that those that build are far better rewarded and end up far happier than those that destroy. Creation itself is an additive process -- the more you create, the more you'll be able to create. Why waste effort in making something fail when you could have a hand in making it succeed?

The most successful companies are the ones that work every day toward building what I call a "culture of ideas". Google is the prime example of this -- if you work at Google, you're encouraged to spend 20% of your work time on ideas that interest you. Think about this -- Google "loses" one day a week of productivity from their workers while they pursue projects that they find interesting! Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll find that it is anything but losing for Google. In fact,

Read the rest of this post »

As legend has it, the humanities program at MIT was started by an MIT president who quipped "too many MIT graduates end up working for Harvard and Yale graduates". The thinking then, which remains to this day, is that engineering classes make a person narrowly focused whereas humanities classes help a student to see the full picture. Although I can see some truth in this, I would argue that a person is far better equipped to be a great manager having taken engineering than its "softer" alternatives.

Read the rest of this post »

I've noticed more and more lately that there seems to be an air-conditioning problem nearly everywhere I go. Businesses for some reason think that their customers want to be kept at a frosty 68 degrees while they shop. Office buildings think that the computers and inhabitants will melt if the temperature leaps beyond the 70 mark. At the offices I've worked at, it's typically so cold that people bring sweaters or fleeces to wear during the day! The Department of Energy says that HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) account for 40-60% of the energy use in buildings. Given that it's expensive, inefficient, environmentally harmful and just plain uncomfortable, why not just turn the thermostat up a few degrees!

Any site on the internet requires visitors to be successful. For social networks, this is even more important, because the quality of the site is defined largely by the quality of user interactions and contributions on that site. About 6 weeks ago, I started up a site, The Free Agents which caters to people between jobs. Its a social network where people can share their experiences and meet others in the same situation. Over the last several weeks, I've been working hard to promote the site. I have no formal training in marketing, so my efforts have come mainly from trial and error and also from advice from marketing professionals, both through their blogs and from actually speaking with them. There are other guides on the internet about generating buzz for your website, but most of them are long on generalities ("Know your goals") and short on details. This guide is an attempt to nail down some of the strategies that have worked for me, and help others that are getting involved in the social marketing landscape. Disclaimer: this is a work in progress, so I have inevitable missed some key points or approached some things in an unusual way. I welcome your comments below!

Read the rest of this post »

In many states, New York included, there is a $0.05 deposit on aluminum cans. The deposit is designed to provide an economic incentive to people so that they recycle their cans instead of just throwing them in the garbage when they're finished. The program works beautifully; however, like many such programs, the way it works isn't necessarily the way you'd immediately picture such a system to function. People that buy the cans and pay the extra $0.05 are rarely the people that end up collecting the nickel when they're done with it -- for them, the deposit is just an added tax on cans that they are still going to throw away. Instead, the people that benefit are those who are able to collect cans out of the garbage and off the street and then turn them in for the deposit. The economic incentive turns an otherwise difficult task -- collecting and sorting a city's worth of cans from the garbage -- into a task done readily by people that otherwise may have few other work alternatives.

Read the rest of this post »

These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. --Clemenza, The Godfather The recession is undoubtedly a very difficult time for America and the rest of the world. However, during this rough period, its important to realize that things will get better. Here are 7 areas and ideas that will emerge stronger when the economic crisis subsides:

Read the rest of this post »

Cross posted on The Free Agents, a social net for people between jobs

I graduated in 2007 from MIT with dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Management. During college, Wall Street was hitting its post-9/11 stride, with CDOs and structured financial products driving firms to record earnings and bonuses to record levels. I took an internship at a major Wall Street bank in the summer of 2006, and then signed on for a job as an equity derivatives trader for full-time. After 3 months of training, I started up in convertible bond trading in September 2007, shortly before Bear Stearns became the first big Wall Street collapse.

Read the rest of this post »