How often have you seen members of your team commit to something that they then don’t do? How often have you done it yourself? It’s not because *they* (ahem) are bad people, or even that they didn’t intend to do it. But simply that they’d only made only one commitment, rather than the 2 that […]
Culture
Are your communications tools actually destroying value?
I love Slack. From a collaboration perspective, I wish it’d been around a long time ago. But it’s contributing to an environment where everyone believes they have the right to disturb everyone else’s work and expect immediate responses. To be fair, I’ve seen email used the same way, with senior managers especially guilty of expecting […]
“Employees First” isn’t the path to a successful business
Business Half-Truth #2: Look after your employees first. I’ve seen too many turn this into making customers a distant second (or third). Yes, team is important. And if you treat your team as an investment, rather than a cost, then your business should reap rewards. But “employees first” works well ONLY IF you have a […]
Focus on culture when your cash flow sucks is like focusing on dancing when you can’t breath
I’m all about the team and the culture. That, to me, is what differentiates businesses, what makes some great, others mediocre, and yet others appalling. But that greatness doesn’t happen without sales, without revenue, without cash and without profit. Sales, profit, revenue and cash are like oxygen. Oxygen doesn’t make us special – what makes […]
Knowledge can destroy your business
Knowledge is power. I still hear this all the time. Sure there’s truth in it, but it’s also simplistic and dangerous. Knowledge hoarders are often bottlenecks. Sometimes intentionally so, knowing that being the only people who can do certain things can make them indispensable. For a while at least. Those of us in technology all […]