…Because you screwed our parents over. I watched it happen to my mom. She busted her chops for years, working overtime (unpaid), and leading an understaffed and constantly dwindling team [...]
At first it seems counterintuitive to ‘write’ down your culture. Where would you even start? Culture isn’t exactly tangible, after all. But it should be. Culture has to be [...]
Most of the time, we do things, because that’s just what we do and we do them that way because that’s how we’ve always done them. I say, to hell with that. In recent a radio [...]
Culture book / culture deck / culture document, call it what you will. In all cases they are generally how an organisation endeavours to capture their culture in their own ‘bible’. [...]
Microsoft have recently launched a program aimed at hiring more autistic workers. In a fascinating article from Fast Company they explain why it matters to hire autistic people and the impact [...]
If you’re asking why on earth would we do something crazy like rewarding failure, you should probably start here. Where we want innovation, there must be failure. The problem is detaching [...]
Why on earth would you want to advertise your failures? Failures make us feel ashamed – that’s not exactly a feeling we want to perpetuate. Futhermore how could advertising your [...]
They fail often, and they often fail intentionally In the enduring battle to stay relevant, to stay in business and to ride the next economic shock wave businesses have to fail, fail in order to [...]
In an incredibly insightful article, ex Director of Engineering at Facebook, Pedram Keyani unpacks some of the magic of the +/- 40 ‘hackathons’ he ran at Facebook over the past 7 [...]
This incredible concept was started as an internal program at Return Path. It has now grown into a stand alone non-profit called Path Forward. As of Tuesday (30 Aug 2016), GoDaddy, Coursera, [...]
Here’s how you end up with a bully in a position of authority at an organization: Someone points out that the bully is a real problem. And the boss says, “I know he’s a bully, [...]
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric summed up the current era of leadership perfectly when he described leadership in the current age in the following way: “…you will have to lead with [...]
“People who don’t spend at least 5-10 hours a week in online learning will obsolete themselves with technology” Randall Stephenson, CEO AT&T. I came across this quote in a [...]
“The truth is, innovation – you can’t tell in the early days whether it is brilliant or crazy. So if you cannot afford crazy, you cannot afford brilliant” Astro Teller, [...]
I’ve recently learnt of a company that does, in addition to ‘No Meeting Wednesday‘ ‘No Email Wednesday’ where they switch off their mail for the day to help [...]
One of the big reasons many companies provide food for their employees is to create ‘intentional collisions’ between people who might otherwise not connect. I saw it first hand when I [...]
“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business, you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic.” — Michael Gerber, The E Myth Andrew [...]
We all have those days where it’s virtually impossible to get any work done, because we are in and out of meetings all day. A lot of the time these can turn into a full week of [...]
This gem recently landed in my inbox: Organized bureaucracies thrive on compliance. It makes it easier to tell people what to do. But contribution is the only way that tribes thrive, the best way [...]
The untapped power of mouth-led communication in organisations. No matter the organisation size, industry, or location it is almost guaranteed that communication will come up as a ‘pain [...]
“I have no right to ever expect that someone that works for us is going to give a higher level of service to a guest than I’m willing to give to that employee” -Paul Saginaw, Co-owner at [...]
At the first signs of trouble in businesses, be it recession, industry downturn or alike – people are always, curiously, the first to go. When business gets tough, people get sacked. [...]
Company Culture is not the free food and the Friday drinks. These are perks. If we took these things away would this still be a great place to work? That’s culture. Google is a company I [...]
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” — Peter Drucker. This is usually one of the first things you come across when exploring company culture. The problem is — it’s almost entirely wrong. It [...]
When you make something easy to do, people do more of it. This was the key thought in a recent article by Amit Singh. He continues: Good systems and programs facilitate behaviours by making them [...]
Peter Drucker’s, often repeated famous quote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” has been recommissioned repeatedly since it’s esteemed utterance. I’m not [...]
Google implore their staff to act like founders, and then they give them the tools and permissions to do so. Netflix hire ‘fully formed adults’ and then trust them to [...]
Changing a current culture, or forging a new one requires hard work, but once you know what kind of culture you want in your business — the key to actually making it effective in the long term is [...]
If culture seems fuzzy to you this diagram should help. Also – it should point out that culture is synonymous with a high functioning organisation. Note the absence of perks, no free food [...]
“One organisational touchpoint often gets mysteriously overlooked: the bathroom. Most office restrooms are bleak and unwelcoming. But for many employees, it’s one of the few [...]
Strong and fit is the new sexy. In much the same way for business, culture is the new sexy. As the Merriam-Webster word of the year in 2014, “culture” has got businesses everywhere scrambling. [...]
Alongside buzzwords like ‘culture’ and ’employee engagement’, perks have become ‘the’ thing in business. In the constant battle to attract and retain talent, [...]
HCL technologies, a tech solutions company that was started in India is pioneering new forms of management and internal practices that truly do put the employee first. Their website is filled [...]
Yes, grit. No, not the type that has anything to do with the image above. The grit I am talking about is behavioural and defined as follows: Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive [...]
(This post contains an embedded video, I recommend you read it on the blog as opposed to in the ‘newsletter’ format. Simply click the link in your e-mail and it will redirect [...]
I recently saw this on INC.com. Yes, the video is quite lengthy, but for golden, advice-flavoured nuggets from 50 great entrepreneurs – it’s worth it. Here’s who you’ll [...]
**Disclaimer: I completely understand the merit of productivity tools for linking up dispersed teams, easy information sharing and project tracking. However I draw the line when they are [...]
Without having too much of a rant I will say this – I cannot wrap my head around the fact that we do not harness more solar energy in this country, I just can’t. Especially living in [...]
If you have been striving to achieve this balance I’m truly sorry, but your efforts have been in vain. Allow me to elaborate. 1. Calling it a work life balance immediately assigns [...]
A while ago I read an article on why Finland is so successful at, well, everything, and earmarked it as “Finland is Awesome”. The more research I do into organisations, and the [...]
As I’ve discussed before, and will likely explore a lot more in future, the 1950’s organisational “asses-on-seats-in-offices = productivity” thinking needs to go. [...]
Whilst more and more research shows how bad sitting for long periods of time can be, most people have little choice but to spend most of their day ass on-seat staring at a screen. Beyond [...]
A UCLA MBA student has gone rogue! He has turned his back on all the management theories he learnt at this prestigious institution and if he were in my vicinity right now- I would high five him, [...]
It has long been said that women can multitask which is seen a positive thing and men cannot, to their detriment. Unfortunately I am going to spend the rest of this article debunking [...]
Heres the thinking: (I am a millennial/generation Y-er myself). My grandparents lived through World War 2, they were raised under very harsh, hard circumstances, you worked and did what you [...]
The ‘Zappos Theory’ is something a lot of people have heard of. If you’re new to the theory- here is the lowdown – Zappos is an online shoe retailer. They provide new employees with a [...]
Working an 8, 9 or even 10 hour day, or a 40 hour work week is a concept I have never understood for 2 main reasons: There is the ‘we are animals and no animals can run flat out for such [...]
It’s a ‘no brainer’ that a company manufacturing bicycles should take employee wellbeing seriously. I mean, you’re selling the outdoors active lifestyle- surely you should [...]
ExactTarget CEO Scott Dorsey has grown his company from 3 to 1300 employees in 11 years, and more since. Throughout this growth which has seen the company going public, Dorsey has maintained the [...]
