Back in the day...when I actually read a physical newspaper, I always carried the paper to the treadmill and immediately opened the last page of The Boston Globe and began the day by reading the comics. Today that daily routine has been replaced by my iPad and the digital excellence of experiencing the daily WSJ.  I still read the so-so content of the Globe, but only online and although the comics are digitally available, even techy-nerdy-me would say..."it's not quite the same". 

I was walking around Kendall Square late yesterday afternoon.  A perfect spring day with the added electricity in the rarified air of Cambridge due to the normal abnormality of MIT, multiple graduations happening this weekend, and entrepreneurs doing more deals than I've seen in years fueled by big money happenning on Wall Street.  A perfect day...until I realized that I was not hearing my normal, "Hey Jack..."  Not at CIC, not at Dunkin's, not even walking through the Cambridge Marriott's lobby.

Classes are over, final presentations to the management of this semester's companies are completed and, on Sunday, I finally...and reluctantly...punched the 'SUBMIT" button for submit grades.  For me, grading is always the worst part of being a professor.  With complex marketing projects this semester from companies such as Black Duck, Accounting Management Solutions, Nameplates for Industry, Paytronix, Boston Financial Management and Fraser Engineering, it's been an exceptional period with a very strong class of students.  Hence, my problem with having to define the exactness between a B+ and an A-.

Late Friday afternoon, I managed to squeeze into the Winhall General Store minutes before closing time and found myself waiting in line beside my friend, Mike, to order takeout.

When I first began working with the senior command of the Boston Police Department about five years ago, I needed to change everything that I knew about doing strategic planning with companies.  Suddenly, I was working with a heavily experienced senior management team where there were no revenue streams to increase.  No sales channels to modify or expand.  No pricing strategies to think about either outside or inside any boxes.  No corporate ROI metrics on gross assets or debt.  Just the deliberate strategies and highly practiced tactics of good old community policing and being measured by the reduction rate of violent crime.

I love my jobs...

...Derby Management, Professor at Tufts and Chairman of Common Angels.  A perfect imbalance of lots of complex work, high emotional and intellectual involvement and demanding assignments and projects. And, most of all, I really enjoy both the stimulation and the satisfaction from teaching marketing at Tufts.  It's complex, rapidly changing, and most importantly, real world work with great students who are eager to prove themselves.  All of which blends perfectly both into our Derby Management clients and even into the exciting, crazy and imperfect world of early stage investing.

It’s final exam time in my juniors and seniors Marketing course, where for the entire semester, my students are grouped into six teams which solve complex assignments given to them a month before the semester begins by the senior management of small and middle market businesses. 

All of the 13 weeks then get boiled down to a 50 minute presentation at which the team members present their findings, recommendations and implementation tactics to the senior management of their companies. After which, each of the team members need to send me their takeaways from their specific project. Three company presentations last Wednesday, and three coming up this week.  Now the tough job of grading, which is always the most difficult part of my job as a professor...ugh!

I thought that Matt Guiness’ comments to me this morning on his takeaways were particularly sound for all of us setting out this week to turn our attention away from the tragedy and celebration of last week and back to focus on our various work assignments and projects:

Matt’s 3 TakeAways…[The text is just modified to leave out the name of the customer]

Click for Video on our Sales Management Boot Camp:  Oct. 6th-8th

It's that time of year again, when I'm searching for six company projects for my seniors and juniors marketing class at Tufts for the fall semester.  We already have two superb companies with very interesting projects up!

With the Annual Stratton Pond Skim held two weeks ago marking the almost-end-of-season events calendar, I finally hung up the snowboard last Saturday.  Took a few turns with Mark Hahn, whom I've not seen since an ACG conference a few years ago.  After reading last week's blog, he texted me, and we had a great time on a blue sky, mid-winter conditions morning.  

Impossible now to look out my home office windows in Vermont.  Snow drifts cover the window, and even if I were crazy enough to try to shovel them away, the 50 feet between the windows and the driveway is one giant ice cube of snow packed 3 feet deep.  Spring?  Maybe in August.  My great-grandfather Horace, who lived up the road a piece in the town of Poultney during the late 1800's , wrote often about living in Vermont with its 11 months of winta' and one month of damn poor sleddin'.