Posts tagged with People:
How to Effectively Conduct One-on-One Coaching Sessions
More companies are adding coaching as part of their communication architecture. A well-designed communication structure will help information and ideas flow freely and efficiently to the whole organization. One-on-ones or coaching sessions are opportunities for employees to share their ideas, … Continue reading
Influence Your Employees’ Motivation With the “5 Ds to Success”
This weekend, I was part of a conversation with a junior lacrosse coach and a hockey coach about strategies for motivating their teams. Both coaches had the same problem: a group of talented players that was difficult to keep motivated … Continue reading
Motivate Your Employees By Eliminating Monetary Rewards
Last time, I wrote about completely taking compensation out of the equation when it comes to performance reviews. Included in the post was Dan Pink’s Ted Talk on The Puzzle of Motivation where he pushes the idea that autonomy, mastery, and purpose … Continue reading
Learn from HubSpot and Refine Your Company Culture to Attract the Best Talent
I recently watched a TEDx talk by Brian Halligan, the CEO of Hubspot who talked about how companies can use their culture to attract the brightest Millennial talent (see the video below). This talk completely resonated with me as I’m … Continue reading
Increase Employee Engagement by Offering Flexible Benefits Packages
In an era of sky rocking benefit costs, employers are facing the dilemma of cutting down their costs associated with their employees’ benefits while still providing an attractive health plan to attract prospective employees. According to a survey conducted by LIMRA, … Continue reading
How to Deal with Compensation Without Ugly Performance Reviews
We all know that everyone hates performance reviews, they are archaic, and there is a tone of research showing that companies will do much better without them. Many empowering companies like Linkedin and HootSuite have eliminated traditional reviews from their performance … Continue reading
How to Give Employee Feedback That Makes a Difference
The term “Feedback” has become very prevalent in the business world. You can view this infographic about the importance of feedback and its evolution in organizations. I am currently on chapter 5 of Abolishing Performance Appraisals by Tom Coens and Mary … Continue reading
How to Effectively Coach Employees
This week, I have started reading “Abolishing Performance Appraisals” by Coens and Jenkins. To be completely honest, the idea of getting rid of performance appraisals has been quite unsettling for me especially after working for companies who were advocates of … Continue reading
Why Managers Should Focus on Coaching, Not Managing
I have mentioned in one of my blogs how performance appraisal carries a negative connotation in workplaces. Just the term appraisal indicates that it is more evaluative than developmental. The traditional performance appraisal is very much related to progressive discipline and … Continue reading
What Are the Benefits of Having an Organizational Chart in Your Startup?
As a growing start-up company, implementing an organizational chart may not be on your list of top priorities. You may think “why should I have an organizational structure when I only have twenty employees, and everyone knows their role?” It … Continue reading
Social Media Makes Us More Honest in the Workplace
At 7Geese, we are well on our way to change the meaning of performance review – Goodbye the traditional paper-based form filling process that creates many problems and Hello integrating performance management with social media to provide real time coaching … Continue reading
How to set and cascade objectives in your performance management process
In my previous blog, I talked about integrating your core values into your performance management process. Another area of performance management is to determine your employees’ objectives/goals as a measure of performance in your organization. In this blog, I will … Continue reading
Hiring For Cultural Fit: Why it’s Important and How to Go About It
Recently, I attended a talk on recruiting where the speaker asked the audience the following question: “What is the biggest cost for a company?” Most attendees answered “people” and then the speaker disapproved by saying “it’s not the people, it’s … Continue reading
How to Communicate and Integrate Your Core Values Into Your Organization
In my previous blog, we have discussed the importance of core values and how to set them in your organization. The next step is to communicate and integrate these core values into your organization, which I’ll be discussing in this blog post. … Continue reading
Company Core Values: Why to have them and how to define them
In the modern business era, we constantly hear the terms core values, mission statements and culture and we have integrated them in the business language among many other terms. But what are company core values? Why are they so important? … Continue reading
Transform your tech company from Good to Great (3/7) – Confront the Brutal Facts
This post is part of my series on how to apply the concepts of the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins, to tech companies. In this post, I’m going to discuss the concept of “Confronting the Brutal Facts without loosing faith” as it applies to tech companies. This post is even more useful for tech startups, where confronting the brutal facts and yet not loosing faith can seem impossible. Continue reading
Transform your tech company from Good to Great (2/7) – First Who…Then What
This post is part of my series on how to apply the concepts of the book Good to Great by Jim Collins to tech companies. In this post, I’m going to discuss the concept of “First Who…Then What” and why it’s important in tech companies to get the right people first and then set the right strategy… Continue reading
Transform your tech company from Good to Great (1/7) – Level 5 Leadership
This post is part of my series on how to apply the concepts of the book Good to Great to tech companies. In this post I’m going to talk about Level 5 Leadership, it’s significance in tech companies, how to cultivate it, and some examples of Level 5 Leaders in the tech industry. Continue reading
Struggle is the prerequisite for greatness [+Video]
The past few years have been very challenging for me, both physically and mentally. Running a business is a stressful, draining task, especially when stacked on top of challenges in my personal life as well. I’ve long wondered how others experience and deal with these kinds of stressful scenarios. Continue reading
Learn from Yammer and become an adaptive tech company
Yammer is a social enterprise software vendor that was recently acquired by Microsoft for $1.2B. A few weeks ago, the 7Geese team attended Yammer’s Hacktoberfest hackathon during their YamJam Annual Conference. Numan, Kevin, and I (shown in pictures below) built … Continue reading
How to transform your tech company from Good to Great
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.” This is the sentence Jim Collins starts his famous book, Good to Great. Good to Great is one of my personal favourites as I believe it’s not worth it or motivating enough to be in business where we are not building something great. Continue reading
Richard Branson’s alternative approach to – Hire Slow, Fire Fast – when dealing with poor performers
I’ve recently moved to San Francisco to open a 7Geese office here, and for the past couple of days, I’ve been attending Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event at the Moscone center in downtown San Francisco. My favourite part of Dreamforce so far has been … Continue reading
Why having a keg in your office does not create a strong company culture
Every company I talk to understands the importance of having a great culture and how company culture can be used as a competitive advantage to build a great brand, to recruit and retain talent, and to build strong relationships with your customers and vendors. However, there is a common misconception these days, especially in tech startups, that having perks like free snacks, food, beer, whiskey, game room, music room, nap room, and ping pong tables creates a strong company culture Continue reading
Stop the Social Business Madness at your Workplace
I recently re-watched one of my favorite TED talks titled “The Power of Introverts” by Susan Cain. Susan’s claim that today’s workplaces are becoming overly social and teamwork-oriented hit home for me, and in this blog post, I will build … Continue reading
Why Traditional Employee Recognition Programs are Broken and How to Fix Them
Employee recognition programs have been around for a long time and there is no doubt that employees who feel recognized are happier, more productive, more engaged, and less likely to leave your company. However, traditional employee recognition programs have limitations … Continue reading
7 Lessons We Can Learn From Geese to Succeed at Work
Geese are fascinating creatures and for many reasons, our company name and logo represent seven geese flying in a V-formation. Below are 7 things we can learn, some of which I extracted from reading Christopher Knight’s post: Sharing a common goal: As … Continue reading
Have You Given a Gift at Work Today?
We are experiencing a shift in our global economy because the way we've worked for the last 50 years will not be the same for the next 50. In North America we have created an industrialized economy that has monetized almost every single exchange between people and businesses. Continue reading
Infographic: Importance of feedback in business and its evolution
How do we become remarkable at work? We ask questions, we challenge assumptions, and we request feedback to improve! Employee feedback is necessary for both employees to advance their careers and companies to enhance their performance. Today over 90% of … Continue reading
Leading Gen Y’s in a Multi-Generational Workforce
Today’s workplace looks and feels very different than it did only 10 years ago – if you haven’t noticed it already, there is a demographic shift of employees that has directly affected how we work. This shift is set to make waves for companies and in this… Continue reading
Business Value of Employee Engagement & How to Measure Employee Engagement
To be remarkable in today’s fast-paced business environment, companies need an engaged and motivated group of employees who are passionate about their organization’s success. Many business leaders and HR professionals have a hard time measuring the impact of engagement in … Continue reading
Benefits of Implementing an ‘UNLIMITED’ or 'NO' Vacation Policy
Many of us have experience with vacation policies either administering them or using them as an employee. And each company’s vacation policy is unique because it reflects their culture and management style; moreover, these policies have evolved over time and … Continue reading
How to Avoid Accumulating Management Debt
You have probably heard of the term Technical Debt, which is the debt you accumulate by choosing quick and dirty short cuts when building your software or any other technology product. You usually have to pay back the accumulated technical … Continue reading
Use your company culture as your competitive advantage
In today’s competitive world, many companies are striving to differentiate based on cheaper prices and offering better products or services. However, it is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate based on these factors. Competitors quickly pick-up on what you … Continue reading
Thriving as an HR professional in a social business era
Yesterday, I was amazed when SalesForce.com announced it’s acquisition of Rypple, a social performance management software provider. Salesforce mentioned that it will re-launch Rypple as “Successforce” and create a new social HCM business unit. Also earlier this week, the social business … Continue reading
The double-edged sword of bonuses
Yay, it’s bonus season! All employees are excited to get some extra cash that they can use to cover some of their expenses associated with the holiday season. Companies are also excited to give out bonuses to keep their people motivated. But bonuses are … Continue reading
