If you’re talking with cofounders about launching a new business, you’re fundamentally recruiting someone to take the job of partnering with you for the next decade. I see a lot of founders who do less due diligence than I think ideal before making that long-term commitment. Just knowing one [...continue reading]
Are you hiring a cultural fit? Do you actually want to?
Who should you hire: the superstar with great skills who feels like a poor fit with the culture, or the person with weaker skills but who fits in culturally? Even though I believe in hiring the stranger, cultural fit really matters. I once had an interview set up with a candidate who looked [...continue reading]
Partnering Strategy, Subcontractors, and Uber
You can’t hire in courtesy and managerial competence; it has to flow from company management outwards. I'm traveling to Atlanta and Boston this month, so starting to plan my logistics. Part of what Uber’s customers pay for is an easy-to-use layer across multiple cab services in multiple [...continue reading]
The Speed of Trust Review
A while ago I read Stephen M.R. Covey's book, The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything . As you would guess, Stephen M.R. is the son of Dr. Stephen R. Covey, who wrote the extremely influential book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The heritage shows. Speed of Trust [...continue reading]
United 93 and Kitty Genovese: Courage in the Workplace
The courageous actions of passengers on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11 flew in the face of a long-standing contention in social science circles that people won't put themselves in danger to right a wrong, e.g., the famous Kitty Genovese case. This fact prompted Monica Worline, a [...continue reading]
Connecting the Corporate Dots: Social Networks Reveal How Employees and Companies Operate
The Wharton newsletter reports: "With the recent disclosure of wiretapping by the National Security Agency and the booming success of sites like MySpace and Friendster, social networking is much in the news today.But serious interest in social networks can also be found among academics, consultants [...continue reading]
The Office Chart That Really Counts
The Office Chart That Really Counts Mapping informal relationships at a company is revealing -- and useful: Two years ago, Ken Loughridge, an information technology manager living in Cheshire, England, uprooted his family and moved to the other side of the world. His company, engineering and [...continue reading]
