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…
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360 reviews
The Best Place to Work, Part 3: Manage yourself very, very well
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…
Scaling the Team
Scaling the Team (This post was requested by my long-time Board member Fred Wilson and is also running concurrently on his blog today. I’ll be back with the third and fourth installments of “The Best Laid Plans” next Thursday and the following Thursday) When Return Path reached 100 employees a few years back, I had a dinner with my Board one night at which they basically told me, “Management teams never scale intact as you grow the business. Someone always breaks.” I’m sure they were right based on their own experience; I, of course, took this as a challenge. And ever since then, my senior management team and I have become obsessed with scaling ourselves as managers. So far, so…
What a View, Part III
What a View, Part III We are in the middle of our not-quite-annual senior team 360 review process this week at Return Path. It’s particularly grueling for me and Angela, our SVP of People, to sit in, facilitate, and participate in 15 of them in such a short period of time, but boy is it worth it! I’ve written about this process before — here are two of the main posts (overall process, process for my review in particular, and a later year’s update on a process change and unintended consequences of that process change). I’ve also posted my development plans publicly, which I’ll do next month when I finalize it. This year, I’ve noticed two consistent themes in my…