Book Not-So-Short: Not Just for Women At the request of the women in our Professional Services team, I recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and while it may seem like dancing the meringue in a minefield for a male CEO to blog about it, I think it’s an important enough topic to give it a shot. So here goes. First, given the minefield potential, let me issue a few caveats up front. These are deep, ages old, complex, societal issues and behaviors we’re talking about here. There is no quick answer to anything. There is no universal answer to anything. Men don’t have the same perspective as women and can come across as…
Category
Leadership
Firsts, Still
Firsts, Still After more than 13 years in the job, I run into “firsts” less and less often these days. But in the past week, I’ve had three of them. They’re incredibly different, and it’s awkward to write about them in the same post, but the “firsts” theme holds them together. One was incredibly tragic — one of our colleagues at Return Path died suddenly and unexpectedly. Even though we’ve lost two other employees in the last 18 months to cancer, there was something different about this one. While there’s no good way to die, the suddenness of Joel’s passing was a real shock to me and to the organization, and of course more importantly, to his wife. The second…
The People Who Go to the Trainer the Most Are the Ones Who Were in the Best Shape to Begin With
The People Who Go the the Trainer the Most Are the Onese Who Were int eh Best Shape to Begin With Have you ever noticed this? That the people working out with trainers in the gym are usually in great shape? So why do they keep working with the trainer? So they maintain their awesome level of fitness, of course! The lesson for business is the same. Just because you have a strong suit doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore it and rest on your laurels (at least not for very long). This is true in good times, and in bad times. When things are going well, it can feel like it’s the right time to turn your focus…
Book Short: Plain Talk
Book Short: Plain Talk An HR rock star I met with recently told me that “You can say anything you want to your people, as long as it’s true,” which of course is great advice. Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick (book, kindle), by Ken Iverson, the long-time CEO of Nucor, pretty much embodies that. If you’re not familiar with Nucor, it’s a steel company – right, steel – and the most successful one of the last 50-75 years, at that. You may think an industrial company like this offers no lessons for you. If so, you are wrong. The reason Nucor has been so successful, if you believe their long time leader, is that they run the people…
How to Wow Your Manager
How to Wow Your Manager Last week, I talked about how to Wow your employees. Now I am going to discuss the converse of that – How to Wow your Manager. Why Wow your manager? Even if you are senior leader in an organization, the Wow factor is still important. What impact does a Wow have? It sends the signal that you are on top of things. Symbolism is important. It also advances the cause further and faster. Why do you want to foster Wow moments with your team? High performing teams have a lot of Wow going on. If all members of a team see Wow regularly, they are all inspired to do more sooner, better. Here are my…
How to Wow Your Employees
How to Wow Your Employees Here at Return Path we like to promote a culture of WOW and a culture of hospitality. Some of you may be asking, Why Wow your employees? The answer is, there is nothing more inspirational than showing an employee that you care about him or her as an individual. The impact a WOW has is tremendous. Being a manger is like being in a fishbowl. Everything you do is scrutinized by your team. You lead by example whether you want to or not and showing your own vulnerability/humanity has an amazing bonding effect. Why do you want to foster Wow moments with your team? High performing teams have a lot of Wow going on. If all members…
Book Short: Entrepreneurial Lessons
Book Short: Entrepreneurial Lessons The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from 42 Founders, by David Kidder, is the ultimate coffee table book for entrepreneurs and people who are interested in how they think about running their businesses. David is the author of the Intellectual Devotional series (here’s a link to one of the five or six books in the series), he’s a good friend of mine and a member of a CEO Forum that I’m in, and my major disclosure about this blog post is that I’m one of the 42 entrepreneurs David interviewed for and profiles in the book. The Startup Playbook is very different from my own book (in progress) on being a Startup CEO. Where…
Taking Stock, Part II
Taking Stock, Part II Last year, I wrote about the three questions I ask myself at the beginning of every year to make sure my career is still on track. [https://onlyonceblog.wpengine.com/2012/01/taking-stock] The questions are: Am I having fun at work? Am I learning and growing as a professional? Is my work financially rewarding enough, either in the short term or in the long term? This year, I am adding a fourth suggestion following a great conversation I had a bunch of months back with Jerry Colonna, a great CEO coach, former VC, and all around great person. Question four is: Am I having the impact I want to have on the world? This last question was probably always implicit in…
Book Short: Culture is King
Book Short: Culture is King Tony Hsieh’s story, Delivering Happiness (book, Kindle), is more than just the story of his life or the story of Zappos. It’s a great window into the soul of a very successful company and one that in many ways has become a model for great culture and a great customer service model. It’s a relatively quick and breezy read, and it contains a handful of legendary anecdotes from Zappos’ history to demonstrate those two things — culture and customer service — in action. As Hsieh himself says in the book, you can’t copy this stuff and believe it will work in your company’s environment as it does in Zappos’. You have to come up with…
Not Just About Us
Not Just About Us When we updated our values this year, we felt there were a couple critical business elements missing from this otherwise “how” series of statements. One thing missing was our clients and users! So we added this value to our list: Not Just About Us: We know we’re successful when our clients are successful and our users are happy. This may be one of the most straightforward statements of all our values, so this will be a short post. We serve lots of constituencies at Return Path. And we always talk about how we’re a “People First” organization and what that means. I suppose that inherently means we are a “Client Second” organization, though I’m not sure…
Two Ears, One Mouth
Two Ears, One Mouth Brace yourself for a post full of pithy quotes from others. I’m not sure how we missed this one when drafted our original values statements at Return Path years ago, because it’s always been central to the way we operate. We aren’t just the world’s biggest data-driven email intelligence company – we are a data-driven organization. So another one of our newly written Core Values is: Two Ears, One Mouth: We ask, listen, learn, and collect data. We engage in constructive debate to reach conclusions and move forward together. I’m not sure which of my colleagues first said this to me, but I’m going to give credit to Anita, our long-time head of sales (almost a…