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How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

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. "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. 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. "You can't have everything you want," Mayer cautions. Nadia Goodman is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, NY. Related:  Career, Enterprise

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. Be More Productive. Shorten the Workweek. Change is important. When we were growing up, we got summers off from school. Summer vacation was change. We grow out of a lot as we grow up. Work in February is the same as work in May. Yes, some businesses are more seasonal than others, but ultimately the stuff we do at work isn’t that much different — it’s just busier some times than others. I wanted to do something about this. For example, from May through October, we switch to a four-day workweek. Most staff workers take Fridays off, but some choose a different day. The benefits of a six-month schedule with three-day weekends are obvious. When there’s less time to work, you waste less time. At 37signals there’s another thing we do to celebrate the seasons: we cover the cost of a weekly community-supported agriculture share for each employee. In the spirit of continual change, this summer we tried something new. People worked independently or joined up with other employees on team projects.

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. 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 results were impressive by education standards: up to 10 percentile points on average (that’s 0.33 standard deviation units, for you statistic nerds). The research holds exciting possibilities for business.

Win the Business with this Elevator Pitch - Steve W. Martin by Steve W. Martin | 7:00 AM August 22, 2012 Pretend that you are in an elevator at one of your industry’s trade shows. You’re heading down to the lobby when the doors open on the thirtieth floor. So, how did you do? They use truisms: They believe their company’s own marketing pitch, which makes claims that are not considered entirely true by the listener. They describe themselves using buzzwords: They repeat industry buzzwords or, worse yet, use technical buzzwords that are known only within their company. They use fillers: They make too much small talk or ask frivolous questions that reduce their stature to the customer. They demean themselves or the listener: Their statements turn them into mere salespeople, not business problem solvers. They present an unreasonable close: They don’t take into account that they are talking to a senior company leader and use a close that is unrealistic or demands too much of the customer. Here’s an example of a poor elevator pitch. Hello, Norman.

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. 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. In fact, analysis paralysis drives me fucking bonkers. Many people find this uncomfortable. So that was a long walk into the topic of recruiting. There is an old management adage that says, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” Only half of this adage is accurate for startups.

Five Reasons to Think About How You Work This is a guest post by ProfHacker author Jason B. Jones, an associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. Jason's personal site is about.me/jbj and tweets from @jbj. Why think about productivity systems at all? Why try to think about ways we can be more productive? Doesn’t that imply we’re not doing enough, or that we’re wasting time? Most people I know are pretty busy, and in fact find themselves burdened more and more each year by ever-expanding, often nonsensical expectations that have little to do with the core academic missions of teaching and research, or with governance. So I don’t want productivity talk to mean, “hey, you’ll be able to get those reports filed and fundraising calls made after teaching your four classes and meeting your fifty advisees. But a lot of academics–even very active, highly productive ones–punish themselves about their failure to produce. You will never get it all done.

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

Harvard Business Review: Why Employees Are Lonely Music might be good for productivity, but headphones may be doing more harm than good for your team. According to a Harvard Business Review report, most young people in the workforce wear headphones--and as a result, cut themselves off from their surrounding environment. Anne Kreamer, author of the book It's Always Personal: Emotions in the New Workplace, conducted an informal survey, asking friends over 35 in a number of different work environments who wore headphones. The answer was always the new kids. “If an employee is glued to her desk with headphones on, immersed in music and G-chatting with her best buddy, she is missing the opportunity to create relationships with people on the job who might be launching a project for which she'd be perfect, or who's kicking around the idea to launch a new firm that needs precisely her talents,” Kreamer writes. “As my interviews revealed, when we put on our headphones and fire up our messenger client of choice,” Kreamer wrote.

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.” 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. 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. 6. It’s strange to me that in the technology sector we have such a reputation for yellers.

What Successful Night Owls Get Done Before Bed Early birds get all the credit. Research indicates that morning people tend to be more active and goal oriented, and such larks as Steve Jobs, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, and 25-year old David Karp, founder of the Tumblr blogging platform suggest that climbing the ladder of success is easier before breakfast. So does that mean night owls are at a disadvantage? Research by Satoshi Kanazawa and colleagues at the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests no. The group discovered significant differences in sleep preferences and found that people with higher IQs are more likely to be night owls. They found an evolutionary shift from being active in the day towards nightly pursuits and that those individuals who preferred to stay up late demonstrated "a higher level of cognitive complexity.” Armed with that knowledge, Fast Company found a group of dedicated night owls to discuss their strategies for making the wee hours work for them. Pick One Project Combat Clutter

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

15 Tips to Rock Your Career All marketers, or entrepreneurs for that matter, obtain unique experiences and perspectives that drive them forward in their careers. Some focus on performance, others leadership, others networking, or an infinite combination of strategies to better themselves in the workplace and set up for the success of future initiatives. In the interest of comradery, sharing among a common profession, or just the belief that learning together will make us all better, I’ve put together my top 15 list of actions to take for you to rock your career. Embrace life-long learning. Bonus tip: Turn yourself into a thought leader in your field. Photo by DepositPhotos. Popular search terms for this article: Cody Ward is a marketing professional, entrepreneur, blogger, and social media advocate. Sponsored Content

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

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