How to Manage Different Work Personality Types
Work personality types: there are a lot of them. I’m going to tell you a story about a young engineer. Once upon a time, this young engineer spent his work hours in an enclosed cubicle at an office where personal computers and scientific calculators were designed. He liked to work alone, preferring solitude over committees […]
This Is How Managers Can Avoid Conflict In The Workplace
No one enjoys conflict in the workplace, least of all the managers who have to deal with it. Naturally, the best way to clean up the mess is through conflict prevention. As the saying goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and prevention is the solution to workplace conflict. It’s a […]
This Was My Single Biggest Mistake in Building Company Culture
Confession time: I made a mistake—one that I’ve been working to correct. I’m hoping that sharing my missteps in building company culture will help save some of you from having to learn the same lessons the hard way. More specifically, my failure to define the culture that I wanted at my last startup from day […]
How We Jell at Rackspace [Interview with Juan Montemayor]
The first thing you see on Rackspace’s website says everything you need to know about who the company is and what it offers. Trusted by the majority of the Fortune 100. A leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud-enabled managed hosting. The largest managed cloud provider, offering you expertise across the world’s leading clouds. […]
How We Jell at Growthwise [Interview with Steph Hinds]
It’s not easy being accessible. Just ask Steph Hinds. As the Head Ninja at Growthwise, she’s built a successful company by making sure an entire team of accountants, advisors and administrators is consistently approachable and available—at all times, for every client, at virtually any hour and from any location. (Growthwise employees work in a flexible […]
An Unusual Example of the Power of Positive Feedback from Johnnie Walker
Positive feedback is a powerful thing. It can turn ill-tempered toddlers into angels. It can transform couch potatoes into recreational athletes. It can motivate an underperforming team to achieve lofty goals. But you may be wondering: What does positive feedback really look like? What specific things can you do to keep your staff motivated without […]
How We Jell at Chargify [Interview with Adam Feber]
In our first installment of How We Jell, we talked to Jacob Krall of Fog Creek Software. Today we bring you more communication and collaboration insights from a team leader at another fast-growing company: Chargify… Adam Feber is an inspiration. O.K., so we might be a little biased. We’ve had a relationship with Chargify—first through […]
How We Jell at Fog Creek [Interview with Jacob Krall]
If you follow today’s fastest-growing startups, you’ve probably read about Fog Creek Software in coveted media clips like this one from Fast Company. The most impressive part? The company is being featured not only for the success of its software, but also because of the practices and policies behind its development. Fog Creek, where tools […]
The Power of Positive Feedback to Build A Happy Productive Team
What makes for a happy, productive team? Before we answer that, let’s take it back a couple of decades. In the early 1990s, psychologist John Gottman wrote a book based on years of research that definitively answered an elusive question: What is the number one behavioral predictor of a successful marriage? The answer: positive feedback. […]
Don’t Let Remote Work Kill Your Culture Of Camaraderie
Camaraderie in the workplace is impossible to achieve without a fully developed company culture. True company culture—the kind that’s studied, scrutinized, and shaped into clearly-communicated core values—is what separates a business that stays afloat from one that rides the waves of success. Culture is what divides the Kip Tindells and Shake Shacks of the world […]