Un bon patron est avant tout un comique. Pour 26% des salariés, l'humour est la première caractéristique d'un bon chef, loin devant l'honnêteté ou la patience, révèle un sondage mené par Office Broker, une agence qui aide les entreprises à trouver des locaux. Un choix pas si superficiel que ça: un quart des sondés estime en effet que le rire aurait tendance à améliorer les relations entre patrons et employés. La capacité d'un patron à dire la vérité arrive en seconde position, citée comme une qualité essentielle par 20% des salariés. 15% des employés privilégient le respect, 13% la patience, 10% l'équité, 9% la capacité de communication et seulement 7% l'honnêteté.
Sondage mené sur 600 employés, dont 60% de femmes. Less-Confident People Are More Successful - Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Startup Mantra: Hire Fast, Fire Fast. This post originally appeared on TechCrunch. I have often said that what separates real entrepreneurs from pundits and bystanders is a bias towards getting things done versus over analyzing things. My credo has always been JFDI. It’s the hardest thing to teach people who come out of big companies, out of conservative jobs. At the big consulting firms, investment banks and established large technology companies we’re taught to produce long reports, make sure that every document is perfect quality and that every possible bit of diligence has been done.
Good enough isn’t. And so things operate on a CYA basis. That doesn’t work in a startup. There’s a certain cadence that you can feel when you spend time hanging any well-run startup company. The startup entrepreneur knows that they’re going to be wrong often. In my mind the sign of a great entrepreneur is the one that spots the 30% scenario quickly and adjusts but doesn’t get gun shy about rapid decision-making in the future. Hire Slowly? Harvard Researchers Find A Creative Way To Make Incentives Work. Incentives are all the rage: employee bonus pay, app badges, student grades, and even lunch with President Obama. Despite their widespread use, most research finds that incentives are terrible at improving performance in the long-run on anything but mindless rote tasks, because the fixation on prizes clouds our creative thinking (video explanation below).
However, a new Harvard study of teachers found that a novel approach to incentives could dramatically improve student performance: give teachers a reward upfront and threaten to take it away if performance doesn’t actually improve. Exploiting the so-called “loss-aversion” tendency could open the door to creative incentivizing for software designers and managers. Harvard University’s Ronald Fryer and his colleagues explain that, in education, pay-for-performance has a dismal record of improving student outcomes. However, humans process loss differently gain.
The research holds exciting possibilities for business. How to Manage Employees When They Make Mistakes. I was recently involved with a company (not as an investor) where an embarrassing mistake was made. One of the leaders took a sort of “heads will roll” approach. It’s not my company so I basically stayed out but tried to encourage him to think differently about the “punishment.”
I didn’t stick around for the repercussions so I hope the process was balanced. But it got me thinking about the topic of leadership and how to manage people through “light” and “heat” (think carrot & stick but I like my analogy better because we’re humans not animals). As a leader you need to have both heat and light in your arsenal.
You cannot lead all people all of the time through light. I know the populist answer is to lead through only light. But when they’re being naughty an “I’ll buy you ice cream if you’re good” approach doesn’t work and isn’t warranted. But that begs the question – what is “heat” and how do you apply it? I always felt that the “disappointed dad” (or mom!) So my rules are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout. UPDATE: Marissa Mayer was named chief executive officer of Yahoo Inc. July 16, 2012. Many entrepreneurs don't even think twice when it comes to working around the clock. Marissa Mayer, Google's 20th employee and current vice president of location and local services, is no exception.
When Google was a young company, she worked 130 hours per week and often slept at her desk. "For my first five years at Google, I pulled an all-nighter every week," Mayer said in a recent talk at New York's 92Y cultural center. "It was a lot of hard work. " Hard work, she says, has been the key to Google's success, as well as her own. For young companies that demand so much of their employees, hard work can spiral into burnout. Step 1. Her assessment is right on target. Related: 3 Postures to Boost Productivity Now Step 2. "People--particularly entrepreneurs--can put in huge amounts of energy and time," Leiter says. Related: A Secret to Creative Problem Solving Step 3. Comment utiliser le jeu dans un contexte d’affaires. Some tidbits from Joel Spolsky's talk last night on recruiting programmers. Peut-on créer une startup tout seul ? Cet article est extrait de “L’accompagnement des startups high-tech en France” écrit par Olivier Ezratty ( membre du Jury, Consultant & Coach Startup, Blogueur sur Opinions Libres ).
J’ai souvent l’occasion d’être contacté, de rencontrer ou de croiser dans divers comités de sélection des entrepreneurs “seuls” dans leur projet. C’est-à-dire qu’ils sont seuls à fonder leur entreprise et qu’ils n’ont donc pas d’associés. Ils ont tout au plus des investisseurs plus ou moins investis dans le projet et éventuellement des employés, souvent des stagiaires embauchés à bon compte. En général, je n’y vais pas par quatre chemins : j’indique le plus souvent à ces entrepreneurs que leurs chances de réussite sont plutôt faibles s’ils envisagent de créer une véritable entreprise et de lever des fonds. Et qu’ils feraient bien toutes affaires cessantes de trouver des associés. Tout d’abord, pourquoi ce préjugé sur les chances de réussite d’un projet qui démarre avec un seul fondateur ? Hope: Don’t Leave Home Without It : The World.
Big Smiles = Big Entrepreneurship Lesson. Look at this picture: Those are pretty big smiles don't ya think? Well, those are my kids. And the reason they are smiling so much is that today is their last day of school. Do you remember how you used to feel on the last day of school. I do. So, why am I telling you this? Because I want you to think about the last time you felt this way in your business. When was the last time you were really excited after accomplishing a goal. As an entrepreneur, too many times it's go go go. We must all slow down sometimes to enjoy life. To do this, you need to constantly be setting goals for yourself. And for certain goals, after you achieve them, you should reward yourself. Sometimes the reward might be as small as giving yourself a coffee break or a piece of candy. At other times, a weekend away or a day off makes sense.
But you must achieve pre-set goals, and you must reward yourself.
Je reprends les feedbacks du Founder Institute avec un peu de retard. Dans la série "j'ai tout pour moi", il y a Aaron Patzer. 30 ans, il a fondé Mint.com il y a 4 ans, tout seul. C'est un service web qui permet aux particuliers de ventiler et suivre leurs dépenses très simplement, qui les analyse et vous suggère de vous fournir ailleurs, là où ça coûte moins cher. Revendu pour 175M$ l'année dernière. Ce n'est pas trop la revente faramineuse qui m'intéresse, c'est le bon sens massif et la pédagogie du personnage, qui a animé une session sur l'équipe de l'entrepreneur : comment embaucher, comment licencier.Il était secondé par Jonathan Bennassaya, de Deezer, intervenant pour la seconde fois au Founder Institute. Je livre leurs bons conseils en vrac : Intéressement Je ferai un post juste là-dessus, mas voilà les grandes lignes.Donnez des parts pour tous les associés ou salariés.
Période d'essai Vitale ! Recrutement C'est là que ressort la vraie personnalité du candidat. Due diligence Licenciement. Why did so many successful entrepreneurs and startups come out o. The Right Way to Lay People Off. I'm trying to write my wrongs,But it's funny these same wrongs helped me write this song—Kanye West, Touch the Sky Kanye West - Touch The Sky | Listen for free at bop.fm Shortly after we sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard, I had a conversation with the legendary venture capitalist Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital.
He wanted to hear the story of how we went from doomed in the eyes of the world to a $1.6B outcome with no recapitalization. After I took him through the details including several near bankruptcies, a stock price of $0.35/share, unlimited bad press and 3 separate layoffs where we lost a total 400 employees, he was most amazed by the layoffs. In retrospect, we were able to keep cultural continuity and retain our best employees despite multiple massive layoffs, because we laid people off the right way. Step 1: Get your head right Step 2: Don’t delay Step 3: Be clear in your own mind about why you are laying people off Step 4: Train your managers Why so strict? Acknowledgements. How to Maintain Project Momentum in Dispersed Teams: Online Collaboration « Working with teams whose members are spread across offices (or even continents) can make it extremely difficult to gauge and manage project momentum.
Momentum isn’t motivation; it’s a separate factor. In fact, it’s often momentum that comes into play when team motivation might be flagging. Project momentum is what makes it easy for team members to get things done even when they have bigger challenges to tackle; it’s what keeps the project’s wheels oiled and spinning, even when team members take time out. While team motivation might be highest at the beginning and end of a project, momentum will, ideally, be consistent or growing throughout. Once you kick off a project, how can you ensure all the collaborators in your team will maintain the momentum to get the job done easily and well? Action Pathways Making sure everyone knows where the project is heading, and what they and their colleagues need to do to get there, is a critical first step in maintaining momentum. Time Allocation Reporting. How to Minimize Politics in Your Company. Who the f@#k you think you f$&kin’ withI’m the f%*kin’ boss—Rick Ross, Hustlin' Rick Ross - Hustlin' | Listen for free at bop.fm In all my years in business, I have yet to hear someone say: “I love corporate politics.”
On the other hand, I meet plenty of people who complain bitterly about corporate politics—sometimes even in the companies they run. So, if nobody loves politics, why all the politics? Political behavior almost always starts with the CEO. What do I mean by politics? How it happens A CEO creates politics by encouraging and sometimes incenting political behavior—often accidentally. Specifically, you will be rewarding behavior that has nothing to do with advancing your business. The other ambitious members of your staff will immediately agitate for raises as well.
Now let’s move on to a more complicated example. How to minimize politics Professionals vs. Minimizing politics often feels totally unnatural. The Technique 1. 2. 3. Closing Thought.