Blog

Are leaders born or made? In my search to answer this age old question, I stumbled across 'The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism' by Olivia Fox Cabane. Cabane takes the side of nature versus nurture, with the book giving step-by-step instructions on how to be more charismatic. The majority of her lessons focus on what is essentially manipulation - mimicking body language, feigning attentiveness, etc. While useful, this really isn't anything new. Read More…

There is a counterintuitive secret to designing and building a product to set it up for optimal success. This principle is potent because it works whether you want breadth of impact, depth, or both. Focusing on your first followers is the right strategy for eventually having impact well beyond your initial reach. Read More…

Finding the right level of process and structure is a tough line to walk for every company. Too much structure can hinder the creative flow - too little and the creativity can run rampant without producing any results. In my time as a middle school teacher, process overcomplicated the job. Weekly lesson plans were copied in triplicate, never to be seen by anyone but myself. Hours were spent tirelessly preparing Individual Education Plans (IEPs) for special needs students, only to have a parent or principal disregard the instructions or launch into a endless barrage of unnecessary changes. While the intent of the structure is to protect educators, the reality is the bureaucracy prevents creativity and personalized instruction in the classroom. Read More…

At Metal Toad we have been expanding our testing to include more behavior driven testing. The end goal is to bridge the gap between the languages that we developers speak (which tend to be more logic than spoken) and the languages that our clients speak (commonly English or some other language that normal people use for communication). One interesting challenge we found was taking all the "awesome" that behat has to offer and applying it to a site that has several domains being served from a single Drupal install running the domain access module. Read More…