Book Short: Alignment Well Defined, Part II Getting the Right Things Done: A Leader’s Guide to Planning and Execution, by Pascal Dennis, is an excellent and extraordinarily practical book to read if you’re trying to create or reengineer your company’s planning, goal setting, and accountability processes. It’s very similar to the framework that we have generally adapted our planning and goals process off of at Return Path for the last few years, Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage (book, post/Part I of this series). My guess is that we will borrow from this and adapt our process even further for 2014. The book’s history is in Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing system, and given the Lean meme floating around the land of tech startups…
Category
Management
The Boomerang Club, or How to Quit Your Job, Part II
The Boomerang Club, or How to Quit Your Job, Part II My post last week on How to Quit Your Job has generated about two dozen comments as well as a really lengthy thread on Y Combinator’s Hacker News. My various replies to comments are worth summarizing here – this is a reprint of my comment on Hacker News: First, my post was not intended to be general advice to employees of all companies on how to handle a situation where they’re starting to look for jobs. Of course, many environments would not respond well to that approach. My point was just that that’s how we encourage employees to handle the situation at Return Path, and we have created a…
How to Quit Your Job
How to Quit Your Job I sent an email out to ALL at Return Path a few years ago with that as the subject line. A couple people suggested it would make a good blog post in and of itself. So here’s the full text of it: ALL – This may be one of the weirdest emails you’ll see me (or any CEO write)…but it’s an important message that I want to make sure everyone hears consistently. If nothing else, the subject line will probably generate a high open rate. 🙂 First off, I hope no one here wants to leave Return Path. I am realistic enough to know that’s not possible, but as you know, employee engagement, retention, and…
Unknown Unknowns
Unknown Unknowns There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” –Donald Rumsfeld Say what you will about Rumsfeld or the Iraq war, but this is actually a great and extensible quote. And more to the point, I’d say that one of the main informal jobs of a CEO, sort of like Connecting the Dots in that it’s not one of the three main roles of a CEO) is to understand and navigate known unknowns and unknown unknowns for your organization (hopefully you already understand…
Book Short: Is CX the new UX?
Book Short: Is CX the new UX? Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine from Forrester Research, was a good read that kept crossing back and forth between good on the subject at hand, and good business advice in general. The Customer Experience (CX) movement is gaining more and more steam these days, especially in B2B companies like Return Path. The authors define Customer Experience as “how your customers perceive their interactions with your company,” and who doesn’t care about that? A few years ago, people started talking a lot more about User Experience (UX) as a new crossover discipline between design and engineering, and our experience at…
Connecting the Dots
Connecting the Dots Although I still maintain that the three primary roles of a CEO are to set Strategy and communicate it, develop Talent, and ensure that the business has proper Resources to run (see post here), I am increasingly finding that I play a fourth role in the organization that’s probably somewhat important, which is Connecting the Dots. What do I mean by Connecting the Dots? I mean helping others network internally, or helping others connect their work to the work of others, or helping others connect their work to the mission of the company, or even to the outside world. Here are a few examples of how I’ve done this kind of work recently: – I joined an…
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…
The Nachos Don’t Have Enough Beef in Them
The Nachos Don’t Have Enough Beef in Them Short story, two powerful lessons. Story: I’m sitting at the bar of Sam Snead’s Tavern in Port St. Lucie, Florida, having dinner solo while I wait for my friend to arrive. I ask the bartender where he’s from, since he has a slight accent. Nice conversation about how life is rough in Belfast and thank goodness for the American dream. I ask him what to order for dinner and tell him a couple menu items I’m contemplating. He says, “I don’t know why they don’t listen to me. I keep telling them that all the people here say that the nachos aren’t good because they don’t have enough beef in them.” I…
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…