The 90-Day Reverse Review Like a lot of companies, Return Path does a 90-day review on all new employees to make sure they’re performing well, on track, and a good fit. Sometimes those reviews are one-way from the manager, sometimes they are 360s. But we have also done something for years now called the 90-Day Reverse Review, which is equally valuable. Around the same 90-day mark, and unrelated to the regular review process, every new employee gets 30 minutes with a member of the Executive Committee (my direct reports, or me if the person is reporting to someone on my team) where the employee has a chance to give US feedback on how WE are doing. These meetings are meant…
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Return Path
Breaking New Ground on Transparency
Breaking New Ground on Transparency I’ve written a lot over time about our Live 360 process for senior leaders in the business. (This post is a good one, and it links to a couple earlier ones that are good, as well.) We take a lot of pride in feedback and in transparency at Return Path, and after 15 years, even for an innovative business, it’s unusual that we do something big for the first time around people. But we did today. This image is of something never seen before at our company. It’s my own handwritten notes about my own Live 360. It’s never been seen before, because no one has ever been physically present for his or her own…
Understanding the Drivers of Success
Understanding the Drivers of Success Although generally business is great at Return Path and by almost any standard in the world has been consistently strong over the years, as everyone internally knows, the second part of 2012 and most of 2013 were not our finest years/quarters. We had a number of challenges scaling our business, many of which have since been addressed and improved significantly. When I step back and reflect on “what went wrong” in the quarters where we came up short of our own expectations, I can come up with lots of specific answers around finer points of execution, and even a few abstracted ones around our industry, solutions, team, and processes. But one interesting answer I came…
Open Vacation
At Return Path, we’ve had an “open vacation” policy for years, meaning that we don’t regulate the amount of time off people take, and we don’t accrue for it or pay out “unused” vacation if someone leaves the company. I get asked about this all the time, so I thought I’d post our policy here and also answer a couple follow-up questions I usually get about it. First, here’s the language of our policy: Paid Time Off You’re encouraged to take as much time off as you can while maintaining high performance and achieving your goals. We don’t count the hours you work, so why should we count the hours you don’t? (Unless you’re a non-exempt employee, and only then…
New New Employee Training
Years ago, my co-founder Jack and I developed a training presentation to give to new employees who were not just new to Return Path but also new to the workforce. This is another one of those things, like my last post on our sabbatical policy, that people ask me for all the time. Bringing new people into the workforce is different from just bringing new people into an organization. I know I got a huge amount of value in my first job in management consulting from just learning how to go to work every day and how to be successful professionally. The process you need to go through is like Onboarding, but on steroids. Not everyone has parents or older…
Sabbaticals
I’ve written a few times over the years about our Sabbatical policy at Return Path, including this post and this post about my experience as CEO when one of my direct reports was on his sabbatical, and this post about my own sabbatical. People ask me this all the time, so I thought I’d write the policy out here. This is the language in our employee handbook about them: You have big dreams. We know. This is your chance to cross something off your life list. Whether it’s climbing Mt. Everest, learning Russian or taking your kids across the country in a Winnebago, we believe in rewarding longevity at Return Path and know that a good long break will leave…
Onboarding vs. Waterboarding
Onboarding vs. Waterboarding One of our new senior hires just said to me the other day that he has been enjoying his Onboarding process during his first 90 days at Return Path and that at other companies he’s worked at in the past, the first few months were more like Waterboarding. At Return Path, we place a lot of emphasis on onboarding – the way we ask employees to spend their first 90 days on the job. I’ve often said that the hiring process doesn’t end on the employee’s first day. I think about the employee’s first day as the mid-point of the hiring process. The things that come after the first day — orientation (where’s the bathroom?), context-setting (here’s…
Debunking the Myth of Hiring for Domain Expertise vs. Functional Expertise
Debunking the Myth of Hiring for Domain Expertise vs. Functional Expertise As a CEO scaling your business, you’ll invariably want to hire in new senior people from the outside. Even if you promote aggressively from within, if you’re growing quickly enough, you’ll just need more bodies. And if you’re growing really fast, you will be missing experience from your employee base that you’ll need to augment. For years, I’ve thought and heard that there’s a basic tradeoff in hiring senior people — you can hire someone with great domain expertise, or you can hire someone with great functional expertise, but it’s almost impossible to find both in the same person, so you need to figure out which is more important…
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…
Startup CEO (OnlyOnce- the book!), Part IV – Book Launches Today!
Startup CEO (OnlyOnce- the book!), Part IV – Book Launches Today! My book is officially on sale on Amazon and iTunes today. The full detailed outline is here if you’re interested, and the link to buy it is here. This is very exciting. I had been saying for a while that I had no idea whether 50 people would buy it or 5,000, but the publisher (Wiley) tells me we had over 2,000 pre-orders, so that’s a great start, at least. So thanks to those 2,000 brave souls, and anyone else who buys it as well. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to your feedback directly, via OnlyOnce, via the #StartupCEO hashtag, via a rating/review on Amazon, or…