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Dan Newman

CEO & Founder of Learn to Scale

Entrepreneur, Professional Learner, & Proud Failure. Writes about sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship from the eyes of a learning and development nerd. Lead teams, manage people, scale a business, and learn better through the biweekly irreverent newsletter, the TL;DR.

Posts
Featured Post

The TL;DR, Hot Takes From TechCrunch Early Stage

A bi-weekly roundup of the ways we downplay culture April 13 - April 26 Is Culture a Luxury? Scene: TechCrunch Early Stage conference. Hundreds of startup enthusiasts, investors, service providers, and students milling about a converted warehouse. Espresso bars scattered around serving handmade lavender lattes. Large standing tables on the main floor where nerds are furiously tapping away at email, ignoring the conference around them. In the parking lot, mostly men in sport jackets and...

2 days ago • 3 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of cultural building blocks March 30 - April 12 The Mundane Building Blocks of a Great Corporate Culture In the last TL;DR newsletter, I shared some very brief commentary and a link to an exhaustive new blog post around resetting team culture. Instead of being uncharacteristically brief this time, I wanted to unpack a big "why should you care" reason for crafting a leadership mandate. TL;DR You can't directly change a team culture. I had a client recently share the results...

16 days ago • 3 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of leadership resources March 16 - March 29 Fix A Broken Team Culture There's beauty in being brief. So, instead of my bi-weekly rambling story filled with puns and links, I'm actually giving you the TL;DR. TL;DR: I wrote a new guide on how to reset team culture through crafting a leadership mandate. It's three preliminary steps, four specific action items, and a FAQ designed to fix team disengagement, trust issues, and/or constant tension. Definitely not brief, but it's...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of business plans March 2 - March 15 A Business Strategy So Easy a New Hire Can Understand It There are things a business owner needs to be able to do: Develop a cohesive story for a sales pitch Hold a team accountable Say no to Good-But-Not-Great ideas Set up goals, work towards them, and change course when things go sideways These are learnable skills for an individual. Doing all of these things consistently, throughout an entire organization, with perfect coordination...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of sneak peeks February 17 - March 1 Get Heard Over the past two months, I've been working on a new eBook around communication. The inspiration came from a lot of similar conversations from completely unrelated teams that kept happening during the Leadership Assessment and Team Workshop. Different companies, but common pain points: Avoiding Truth: Teams were talking around problems and avoided the hard- but inevitable- decisions Duplicated Efforts: Multiple people were...

about 2 months ago • 2 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of 1-1 human connection February 3 - February 16 Building Team Trust Happens One-on-One In the world of fast-paced work, efficiency reigns supreme. We schedule every minute, fill calendars with meetings, and chase deadlines with laser focus. Yet, amidst the organized chaos, something crucial often gets lost: genuine, unstructured time for human connection. This is where the humble 1-on-1, often relegated to “that thing we usually cancel,” takes on a whole new meaning....

2 months ago • 3 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of fast, cheap, and high-quality advice January 20 - February 2 Fast, Good, or Cheap? It's the season for offsites, where strategic planning goes on its first date with reality. OKRs get set, workstreams get defined, and you order that slightly more expensive bottle of wine. If you're like me and you throw up a little in your mouth when you hear the phrase "we are going to set SMART goals," try on a different conceptual framework as you scope out what you're doing this...

3 months ago • 2 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of focusing one one thing January 5 - January 19 Cartoon by J.C. Duffy, New Yorker 2008 Fewer, Not Less You're probably aware of the fact- but ignore it- that the executive functioning part of your brain (the part that "thinks") can only focus on one thing at one time. You have only one slot. One stick of RAM, one drill bit, one spell slot- One. Thing. Sure, you can replace the thing in the slot quickly, aka multitasking, but it's empirically a bad idea if you want to get...

3 months ago • 3 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of annual plans to possibly fail December 23 - January 5 What 1,000 Swedes Can Tell Us About Goals It's that time in the content calendar for business gurus and LinkedInfluencer-types to hype about goal setting. If your social media algorithm is like mine, it seems like everyone and their mom are talking about SMART goals, posting their 4-day exercise regime results, and offering untold riches through...breathing? The start of a new year, just like the start of any major...

4 months ago • 4 min read

A bi-weekly roundup of lessons learned December 9 - December 22 Looking Back, Looking Forward To prepare for 2024, I'm looking back in the year to understand what the heck I did for 365 days. Did you know that it's December? Blew my mind last week. Specifically, I've been doing mini debriefs of every Learn to Scale client to see if there are some macro trends that Learn to Scale should capitalize on in 2024. Here's a peek at some of my retrospectives: Client A 🤷♂️ Perceived problem: Wanted to...

4 months ago • 3 min read
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