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February 7 - March 30, 2024
Is there anything in her history of results that supports this conclusion? (For more practical insights about building Job Scorecards, read Bluewire Media’s excellent blog on the topic.)
it’s crucial that you start playing chess sooner rather than later.
why the traditional “feel-good” interview has such a high failure rate.
figure out how to fix it instead of who’s to blame
We failed to do this every fuckups happened
“is an example of how we give our company culture and value a high priority.”
1. How can we expect our employees to be extraordinary and differentiate the company if we use the same hiring and onboarding methods as competitors? 2. What characteristics describe our ideal workforce that our competitors could not or would not use to describe theirs?
At MOM’s, the online job application asks questions such as “What companies do you admire?” to get a sense of a candidate’s values. “That gets us to a place where we know what is important to them,”
our values.”
failure to develop sufficient leadership is one of the three biggest barriers to growth.
one great person can replace three good ones. Through rigorous selection (i.e., Topgrading), they get the absolute best talent in the door, pay employees above-market rates, and then invest heavily in training and development to make them more productive.
“Do we want a whole bunch of low-paid dumb folk; or would we rather have a whole lot fewer, better-paid smart folk?” Costco pays its employees roughly 70% more per hour
In general, competing on low labor and training costs is a slippery road and usually not sustainable.
“Fairness” does not mean “sameness.”
Nothing is more frustrating for A Players than having to work with B and C Players who slow them down and suck their energy.
Are there lame policies and procedures frustrating your team?
Focus on eliminating or delegating tasks that drain you.
Great managers discover what is different about people and capitalize on it. Great leaders discover what is universal, build a common vision for a better future around
“Why don’t you throw people a party when they start, instead of when they leave?”
one Core Value was reinforced each day, so by the end of the week, everyone understood in a real way the cultural and strategic approach Sapient preferred on all projects.
Nice to apply in our onboarding
People are exceptionally positive, receptive, and willing to learn in this phase, and they experience deep attachment to whatever you expose them
Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want. It is a great resource with many practical tips and hands-on guidelines on how to structure your one-on-one conversations.
deeper purpose of coaching: “When all is said and done and we’ve completed this journey we call life, what will matter most is not what we have achieved — but rather who we have become.”
Call it Talent Development, Human Relations, People Support, or Head of People Experiences — whatever term fits your culture — choose to call this function anything but Human Resources.
But you say yes only until you have the luxury to say no (read that sentence again).
However, there is a misconception that these players are thinking more moves ahead of mere masters or novices.
get help from mentors, advisors, and consultants who have developed strategies for hundreds of companies — they’ll have more “next moves” in their bag of tricks.
Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)
A strong Core is the foundation for an effective strategy.
— and prevent culture drift as the organization scales. A weakened culture will torpedo any strategy.
This Core provides the link between People and Strategy in our 4 Decisions model.
codify the Core, articulate it, and reinforce it on an ongoing basis.
“essentially spent the next 11 years repeating myself,”
The rule becomes, “If you think you need to ask me permission for something, just consult the Core Values!”
The rare few companies that succeed in scaling up by making them, as Ratliff did at Appletree, have a process for quickly inculcating the acquired employees into the acquirer’s existing culture
Values are neither good nor bad. They just are! The key is to articulate them accurately.
Why would our customers or the world miss us if we weren’t around?
equally important for a company to understand what it is inherently incapable of doing, or its core weaknesses.
“What CEOs don’t realize is the access you have that other people don’t, and how you can create opportunities for people you never would have thought of,”
the initiative cost money, it paid a 20 times return on investment in terms of reduced turnover costs in less than a year.
“The overall sense of belonging, of being part of something bigger than themselves or their individual sites, and part of a community, has been one of the biggest changes I’ve seen in employees,” says Ratliff. “I felt more connected to our entire group, and the company became much more human to people.”
ALL of your HR (People) systems and processes around one list of your Values and Purpose.
“I’m upstairs. Can you get my dad? It’s really important,” the caller said, and then the line went dead. The employee could easily have treated this as a prank but instead tracked down the caller’s father. Her father went upstairs and found out she was having a heart attack. (She is fine now.) That story was one of the winners in Appletree’s quarterly contest, showing how the value of taking care of each other could go beyond the walls of the company.
This made me cry
a proper onboarding process makes new hires feel welcome and integrates them more quickly into the culture.
“Anytime you have a discussion with an employee about performance, it’s much easier if you have a Core Value you can tie it back to,”
“Every time you praise or reprimand someone, tie it back to a Core Value or Purpose.”
getting the Core right and using it to drive the business makes great business sense besides creating a great place to work.
Core also serves as a foundational piece to setting strategy,
“more companies die from indigestion than starvation.”
The 4Ps of marketing (Product, Place, Price, and Promotion) is the other guiding framework. From our perspective, marketing strategy = strategy.
Ogilvy & Mather’s 4Es of marketing (Experience, Everyplace, Exchange, and Evangelism),
