Privacy Over Secrecy Understand the difference between privacy, which is based on trust - and secrecy, which isn't. Adam Thomas writes, "Your communication culture has a huge impact on the rest of your business. Cultivating an atmosphere of trust is essential for success."
Employee 1-on-1 Meetings Every employee should meet privately with their direct manager (for a minimum of fifteen minutes once per week) to review successes and failures, review plans and strategies, and eliminate barriers to efficiency.
Weekly All-Hands Meeting All-hands meetings are an opportunity for upper management to motivate and cheerlead, and for departments and teams to share their success stories. Quarterly events can augment and enhance these meetings.
Blameless Post-Mortems When a system fails, we tend to blame an individual, obliterating their self-esteem and damaging team cohesion. Instead, institute a written policy that all system failures are to be analyzed as a technical error, not personal failure.
Unlimited Time Off Free up staff resources from tracking paid time off, attract high-potential employees, and take advantage of flexible schedules. Employees manage their own time well, as it is in their own best interest not to damage their career.
Robust Holiday Calendar Vacation and holidays are needed to prevent employee burnout, and denying this expected rest while the rest of the world enjoys them is cruel. We recommend the following mininum holiday calendar:
New Year's Day
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Presidents Day
Memorial Day
Juneteenth
Independence Day
Labor Day
Indigenous Peoples' Day
Election Day
Veteran's Day
Thanksgiving Day
Day After Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year's Eve
Videos
Drive by Dan Pink Against the backdrop of whiteboard visuals, Dan Pink explains that in roles requiring higher thinking, people are motivated by job satisfaction, positive outcomes, and engagement, not by monetary rewards.
Greatness by David Marquet According to David Marquet, a great leader fosters the two pillars of control: clarity and competency, while putting decision-making in the hands of those closest to the relevant information (often the lowest-ranked members of an organization).
Why Xerox Failed by Steve Jobs Jobs' prophetic message is simple: when sales and marketing departments run a company, they erode the product genius that brought them to power. From "The Lost Interview", 1995.
Ted Lasso (Television Series) Coaching, teaching, and mentoring are explored from the pitch to the boardroom. Ted Lasso's empathy and compassion give his players the strength and support to grow as a team and triumph.
Books
How Stella Saved The Farm by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble "The parable is about a farm in trouble. Bankruptcy, or the grim prospect of being acquired by a hostile competitor, threaten. The farm succeeds only if the team pulls together and innovates."
The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton "Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton builds on his acclaimed Harvard Business Review article to show you the best ways to deal with assholes, and why they can be so destructive to your company."
Articles
The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman "Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group, [it] becomes a way of masking power, and ... is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not)." [link]
On The Folly of Rewarding 'A' While Hoping For 'B' by Steven Kerr "Numerous examples exist of reward systems that are fouled up in that the types of behavior rewarded are those which the rewarder is trying to discourage, while the behavior desired is not being rewarded at all." [link]
The Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour by Maria Mies "For the maintenance of an asymmetric exploitative division of labour on a national and international plane (the two are interlinked), full-fledged capitalism needs an ever-expanding state machinery of repression and a frightening concentration of means of destruction and coercion." [link]