This is a part of a series that was created to help you get the practice of retrospectives built into your company. This series will walk through the approach, necessary roles, in addition to guides for each role to help your company get started quickly. Getting the Most out of Your Meetings Here are some tips for getting the most out of your meetings: Come prepared with your ideas Speak your mind – focus on the process, not people Stay on topic – if ideas for other conversations come to you, write them down and pursue them after the meeting Treat…
Even the best leaders lose their tempers sometimes. And yes, that is a bad thing … … or is it? Fast Company’s Heidi Grant Halvorson dug up some interesting research on anger in the workplace: “New research suggests that anger can in fact be a good motivator, but whether or not it works depends in large part on the personality of your employee.” So how do your management teams discover this information about personality types? Agreeable personalities — the always-smiling, never-squabbling employees — “tend to be more courteous and respectful, prefer cooperation over…
Redefining your market type takes a lot of work, can cause internal wreckage, but ultimately will give your company a leg-up on the competition. In Steve Blank’s post about shifting marketing strategy in the graphics board market, he discovered that several stellar product marketing employees bailed on the project due to miscomprehension or a lack of urgency. He also saw that the competition had previously defined the market type, and that his company was attempting to compete by their rules with the same types of technology messages. That business model had to…
Redefining your market type takes a lot of work, can cause internal wreckage, but ultimately will give your company a leg-up on the competition. In Steve Blank’s post about shifting marketing strategy in the graphics board market, he discovered that several stellar product marketing employees bailed on the project due to miscomprehension or a lack of urgency. He also saw that the competition had previously defined the market type, and that his company was attempting to compete by their rules with the same types of technology messages. That business model had to…
Business doesn’t have to be chilly. Tapping into the entrepreneurship of the innovative moving company College Hunks Hauling Junk, Fast Company explores Three Tips for Building Something Great. The subtext of the article is this: approach your business with a creative mind and an open heart … and witness hearts opening up to you. To summarize: Don’t run yourself ragged for business reasons. Take care of health, family and friendships. Separate emotions from your business. Be detached (but not ambivalent, of course). Develop staff, client, and community loyalty. The rest of the post is…
Looking for insight, leadership experience (and possibly seed money) that the right mentor can provide your management team? Sometimes it’s easier said than done. But if you follow VentureBeat’s 6 tips on finding the right mentor, you could nab the right one to help development of your board. A few things to look out for: Make sure the prospective mentor really has the time. There’s no point in building a relationship with a mentor if said mentor can’t commit adequate time. Rushing into the world of mentorship can blind people to its…
Getting tough … might be a little tough. Management wants to keep employees happy and productive; the concept of coming down hard on your people and teams sounds more dangerous than beneficial. That may not be so, according to the Harvard Business Review. “Good companies are not wrong to be tough on employees. If you wade through the recent research on employee mood and workplace performance, you find stark evidence that difficult environments often bring out the best in people.” HBR posits that being straight with your teams is showing…
Welcome to the Golden Age of start-ups, where tenacious business and leadership strategies have led start-up owners to generate ideas, build products, and scale their businesses better and faster than they ever have before. The biggest takeaway centers on connectivity and customer engagement in start-ups. Scott Albro writes: “Product development and customer feedback have become high priority items early in a company’s life. These two things form what might be called the start up virtuous cycle — the more you engage your customers, the better your product will be. And the better your…
Productivity constraints at a business usually concern delivering on a short period of time. That’s the proverbial challenge, doing more with less. Or in this case, doing more faster. At a startup, this should always be your main concern. Startups move at a million miles per hour. They can be born overnight, but they can fade out just as quickly. Release planning is one area where doing more faster can be most beneficial. You want quick iterations whenever possible. And this principal is the perfect catalyst for this. Scaling a business, especially a startup, needs to be done with speed.…
This is a part of a series that was created to help you define what you aspire to be as a company. This series will walk through the process, necessary roles, in addition to guides for each role to define your aspirations quickly. Your company’s aspirations are what you aspire to be as a company. They are the longest-term and most aggressive goals for your company. Your aspirations can be organized in many different ways, but most frequently are organized as your mission, vision, values, and priorities. The ultimate goal of identifying, expressing, and living your company aspirations is for…
