Part of creating the best place to work is learning how to self manage – very, very well. This is an essential part of Creating an environment of trust , but only one part. What does self-management mean? First, and most important, it means realizing that you are in a fishbowl. You are always on display. You are a role model in everything you do, from how you dress, to how you talk on the phone, to the way you treat others, to when you show up to work. But what are some specifics to think about while you swim around in your tank? Don’t send mixed signals to the team. You can’t tell people to do one thing, then…
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Return Path
The Best Place to Work, Part 2: Create an environment of trust
Last week, I wrote about surrounding yourself with the best and brightest. Next in this series of posts is all about Creating an environment of trust. This is closely related to the blog post I wrote a while back in my series on Return Path’s Core Values on Transparency. At the end of the day, transparency, authenticity, and caring create an environment of trust. Some examples of that? Go over the real board slides after every board meeting – let everyone in the company know what was discussed (no matter how large you are, but of course within reason) Give bad news early and often internally. People will be less freaked out, and the rumor mill won’t take over Manage like…
The Best Place to Work, Part 1: Surround yourself with the best and brightest
First in my series of posts around creating the best place to work is to Surround yourself with the best and brightest. This one is simple. Build the best team you can possibly build…as you need it. As a founder, you may be the best person at doing everything in your company, especially if you are a technical founder. But as my long-time Board member at Return Path Greg Sands always says, when the organism grows, cells start to specialize. Eventually, you need a liver and a brain. Just like companies need a head of sales and a CFO (not to imply that Anita likes the occasional cocktail or that Jack likes math – turns out both like both). How…
Post on Return Path and People
Post on Return Path and People For those readers of OnlyOnce who aren’t also readers of Fred’s AVC blog, Fred invited our SVP People, Angela, to guest post on his site this week as part of his series on HR/People. Her post is here, and it’s a great encapsulation of a lot of what we do at Return Path from a People perspective.
The Best Place to Work, Part 0
The Best Place to Work, Part 0 I keep getting questions about a deck I’ve used several times at Techstars, Seedcamp, DreamIt, and the like which is called “7 Ideas for Creating the Best Place to Work.” So today I will launch a 7-part series over the next 7 weeks to describe my 7 points. As always, this is not intended to be perfect or comprehensive, but it is a bit of lessons learned over the last 12-13 years at Return Path. It’s just 7 ideas – not the only 7 ideas. And there’s nothing magic about the number 7, despite what George Costanza says. Or Steven Covey. Here’s the outline: Surround yourself with the best and brightest Create an…
Running a Productive Offsite
Running a Productive Offsite A couple OnlyOnce readers asked me to do a post on how I run senior team offsites. It’s a great part of our management meeting routine at Return Path, and one that Patrick Lencioni talks about extensively in Death by Meeting (review, book) – a book worth reading if you care about this topic. My senior team has four offsites per year. I love them. They are, along with my Board meetings, my favorite times of the year at work. Here’s my formula for these meetings: – WHY: There are a few purposes to our offsites. One for us is that our senior team is geographically distributed across 4 geographies at the executive level and 6 or…
Book Short: Alignment Well Defined
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business is Patrick Lencioni’s newest book. Unlike most or all of his other books (see the end of this post for the listing), this one is not a fable, although his writing style remains very quick and accessible. I liked this book a lot. First, the beginning section is a bit of a recap of his Five Dysfunctions of a Team which I think was his best book. And the ending section is a recap of his Death by Meeting, another really good one. The middle sections of the book are just a great reminder of the basic building blocks of creating and communicating strategy and values – about driving alignment….
How Creative Do You Have to Be?
How Creative Do You Have to Be? To follow up on last week’s post about the two types of entrepreneurs, I hear from people all the time that they can’t be an entrepreneur because they’re not creative. I used to say that myself, but Mariquita reminds me periodically that that’s nonsense…and as a case in point, I didn’t have the original idea that gave birth to Return Path James Marciano did. And I didn’t have the original idea to create a deliverability business, George Bilbrey did. Or an inbox organizer consumer application, Josh Baer did. But I still consider myself an entrepreneur as the founder and leader of the company, as it takes a lot of creativity and business building…
You Can’t Teach a Cat How to Bark, But You Might be Able to Teach it How to Walk on its Hind Legs
You Can’t Teach a Cat How to Bark, But You Might be Able to Teach it How to Walk on its Hind Legs My co-founder George and I have had this saying for a while. Cats don’t bark. They can’t. Never will. They also don’t usually walk on their hind legs in the wild, but some of them, after some training, could probably be taught to do so. Working with people on career evolution sometimes follows that same path. Lots of the time, an employee’s career evolution is natural and goes well. They’re playing to their strengths, in their sweet spot, progressing along nicely. But often that’s not the case. And it goes both ways. Some employees want something different. …
Skip-Level Meetings
I was talking to a CEO the other day who believed it was “wrong” (literally, his word) to meet directly 1:1 with people in the organization who did not report to him. I’ve heard from other CEOs in the past that they’re casual or informal or sporadic about this practice, but I’ve never heard someone articulate before that they actively stayed away from it. The CEO in question’s feeling was that these meetings, which I call Skip-Level Meetings, disempowers managers. I couldn’t disagree more. I have found Skip-Level Meetings to be an indispensable part of my management and leadership routine and have done them for years. If your culture is set up such that you as CEO can’t interact directly…
A Great American Experience
A Great American Experience President Obama signed into law today a bill called the JOBS Act. I haven’t read the full text of the law, but based on abstracts, my opinion of the JOBS Act is that it’s great for the startup community, but even greater for growth companies. I am less familiar with the Crowdsourcing components of the bill, but certainly that will make it easier for pure startups to attract micro capital. The Sarbanes-Oxley reforms that make it easier and less costly to go through an IPO and be a public company will really enable growth companies like Return Path and many others in the Internet industry to go public a little earlier and with less difficulty. Tapping…