299 Posts Found

Jay Desai has FOMU. As a first-time founder and CEO of health technology startup PatientPing, he’s got a healthy fear of messing up. This anxiety especially bubbles to the surface when it has to do with his team — now over 100 employees — and particularly the seven who report directly to him. He’s seen too many immensely talented and productive teams stall because of … [ Read more ]

Author: Jay Desai | Source: The Indispensable Document for the Modern Manager | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: PatientPing

The single best tool I have found to help unlearn the yes-man ways of a startup CEO is a single-page document we call our MSPOT. With it, we articulate our Mission, the constituencies we Serve, the Plays we’re going to run this year, the plays we are going to Omit, and how we will Track our progress.

The most painful portion of that document are the … [ Read more ]

Author: Brian Halligan | Source: The Art of Strategy Is About Knowing When to Say No | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

In the summer of 2011, Facebook announced it would use the social performance platform Rypple (now part of Salesforce.com) for internal reviews and communications.  Rypple allows employees to create and compete in challenges, receive recognition from colleagues, see what others are working on, and find where needed skills may exist within an organization. But Rypple is not a game. It doesn’t even look like a … [ Read more ]

Author: Doug Palmer | Source: The engagement economy: How gamification is reshaping businesses | Original Publication: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Companies: Facebook, Rypple

By determining where, how, and why value is created and destroyed within each business unit, managers can typically uncover opportunities to double the value of their business units within two to three years. To accomplish this feat, management must identify which customer segments are most profitable, which product and service features are most important to meeting the needs of customers in these segments, and which … [ Read more ]

Author: Michael C. Mankins | Source: Using ‘Outside-The-Box’ ThinkingTo Drive ‘Inside-The-Box’ Strategies | Original Publication: Marakon | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Because fakes (counterfeit goods) are getting better—sometimes even coming in lookalike packaging—it’s a good idea to include secret features that distinguish your products from knockoffs, especially if you’re worried about liability suits resulting from counterfeits. “You can put secret tells in your product,” says Dave Tognotti, general counsel of Monster. It marks its headphones with microscopic dots, and stamps some of its packaging with codes … [ Read more ]

Authors: Dave Tognotti, Jennifer Alsever | Source: How to Win Against Counterfeiters | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Legal, Operations | Company: Monster

Intermittent “extras” are more powerful than constant bonuses that are predictable. Say that a manager wants to reward employees. A good way to do it is with a lottery system. You could set it up so one would have to maintain some level of performance to be eligible for the lottery. The hope of entering the lottery will keep workers going at a higher level … [ Read more ]

Author: Joseph LeDoux | Source: Management Wisdom From a Neuroscientist | Original Publication: Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Spanning’s Jeff Erramouspe likes to hire salespeople in pairs. “You spend the same energy training one sales rep as two,” he says, “and it promotes healthy competition from the start.” It’s also a hedge against high turnover: “You don’t want to spend all that effort and be back where you started.”

Authors: Alix Stuart, Jeff Erramouspe | Source: How Many Salespeople Do You Really Need? | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources, Marketing / Sales, Training | Company: Spanning

One important initiative at ING has been a new three-week onboarding program, also inspired by Zappos, that involves every employee spending at least one full week at the new Customer Loyalty Team operations call center taking customer calls. As they move around the key areas of the bank, new employees quickly establish their own informal networks and gain a deeper understanding of the business.

We have … [ Read more ]

Authors: Bart Schlatmann, Deepak Mahadevan, Peter Jacobs | Source: ING’s agile transformation | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources, Training | Company: ING

At Zumasys, in addition to the typical corporate benefits, every employee gets three to four weeks of vacation, complementary access to the company’s two-bedroom Vegas loft, and the opportunity to qualify for a tenure-based international travel program that, each year, gives four to six employees a week off with pay and a $4,000 stipend to travel to the destination of their choice. The open-book financials … [ Read more ]

Authors: Paul Giobbi, Susan Cramm | Source: Strengthening Your Cultural Fortress | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Social Responsibility | Company: Zumasys

At the end of their induction period (generally three months), new hires are required to write (and discuss with their boss) a short report documenting anything and everything that they have found interesting or surprising since joining the company.

Author: Jean-Francois Manzoni | Source: How to institutionalise dissatisfaction | Original Publication: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Every three months, a group of people from the organization—younger people, junior people, but never the same people—sits down and looks at one segment of the company’s products, or services, or process or policies with a question: If we didn’t do this already, would we go into it the way we are now? Every four or five years, that company has systematically abandoned or at … [ Read more ]

Author: Peter Drucker | Source: Retool Your Business With a Clean Sheet of Paper | Original Publication: Time | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Strategy

AT&T has built a digital infrastructure enabling all employee suggestions to be logged online. A small, dedicated team regularly reads and triages the suggestions, sending each promising one to a designated leader or expert who is obligated to consider it and respond. Employees can see the progress of each suggestion and log comments. Other companies have developed systems that enable employees to “vote up” or … [ Read more ]

Author: Rob Markey | Source: The four secrets to employee engagement | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: AT&T

Successfully competing for top talent involves both selling jobs to the best candidates and retaining the highest performing incumbents. In order to be seen as an employer of choice with a compelling value proposition for employees, many companies measure turnover and conduct exit interviews with departing employees to gather feedback about the experiences people had working there and the reasons why they’re leaving. But a … [ Read more ]

Author: Ben Dattner | Source: Why You Should Interview People Who Turn Down a Job with Your Company | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

One of the best ways to find out where consumers’ pain points (and thus your opportunities) are is to talk to your frontline people. Your retail and call center people have heard it all; once every quarter, spend half a day asking them what challenges your customers face, and then focus your innovation investments on findings ways to address those issues.

Author: Catherine Palmieri | Source: Boost Your Innovation Confidence | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Customer-Related

We started a weekly coffee break with our CEO where six people get to sign up to informally discuss a specific topic with her. Not only does this give employees valuable face time with her, but it’s also been fantastic for Julia because it’s a new way for her to talk to a broader cross-section of the team and get their thoughts on topics that … [ Read more ]

Author: Terra Carmichael | Source: Staying Connected is Key to Your Startup’s Survival — Here’s How to Nail Internal Comms | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management | Company: Eventbrite

We’ve rolled out a weekly(ish) email for leaders at Eventbrite that summarizes all the things they need to be thinking about in terms of managing and messaging to their team. We break it down into a few sections: things to know, things to do, things to share. It sounds simple, but let’s be real, leaders are an important and expensive investment, so you want to … [ Read more ]

Author: Terra Carmichael | Source: Staying Connected is Key to Your Startup’s Survival — Here’s How to Nail Internal Comms | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Eventbrite

ipd Company, a small auto parts company in Portland, Oregon, pays its employees to read. And, not just business books, but a wide range of self-improvement books. And, not just books, but also tapes and audio/video seminars.

Richard Gordon, president of ipd, started the “Learn and Earn” program in 1988 when he began to wonder, “what would it be like if our people read the same … [ Read more ]

Author: Richard Gordon | Source: Learn and Earn | Original Publication: InnovationNetwork | Subjects: Human Resources, Training | Company: ipd Company

If a benefit, perk or experience is created for your in-office team members, find a way to create parity for those who aren’t in person. That means mailing items given to your in-office team to remote workers — or if you cover lunch for your in-office team, send your remote team a gift card or stipend for food delivery. […] If your leadership team has … [ Read more ]

Author: Bob Moore | Source: This Founder Built Startups in 2008 2016 and 2018. Here’s What He’s Learned About Resiliency | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

When George Halvorson was chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, he instituted a “rule of two” to encourage diversity and help avoid the “just like me” bias that’s prevalent in many promotion decisions. For appointments at the VP level and above, Halvorson encouraged leaders to bring three candidates, and no more than two of them could have a similar demographic profile—for example, sex or race. … [ Read more ]

Authors: George Halvorson, Lareina Yee | Source: Fostering women leaders: A fitness test for your top team | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources | Company: Kaiser Permanente

As outlined in the [company’s] Day One Document, a hire sends an “Introduce Yourself” email at the end of the first day. It’s a scripted greeting to the company from the new hire sharing a bit of background and trivia. “Everyone who starts with the company sends one out. It also includes a photo and a link to three questions on Barista, Percolate’s internal Q&A … [ Read more ]

Author: Noah Brier | Source: Our 6 Must Reads for Onboarding Tactics That Help New Hires Succeed (and Stay) | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior | Company: Percolate