Monthly Archives: September 2010

30
Sep

Building a workforce of one

Published by adil in Entrepreneurship, Productivity Reply

Tweet As I have seen our company grow, I have been thinking a lot about the best way to serve its employees.  One lesson that I have repeatedly learned is that people are very complex and different.  I am continually taught new lessons about how what works for one person does not work for another.  Every effort I have made to treat a group of different people the same way has backfired.  I am slowly, → Read More

24
Sep

Hedonistic pricing and the problem of shared cost..

Published by adil in Agile Reply

Tweet I was reading this great blog post about the problems with estimating business value by Mike Cohn, and found that it identified a problem that has been nascent in my mind for a little while now. I won’t summarize the whole blog post here (you should just go read it!), but I will talk about how it gets me to thinking. We’ve recently started our company-wide steering committee process, and I have had a → Read More

22
Sep

How to successfully integrate into a new company

Published by adil in Creative, Development, UX Reply

Tweet New team-members are not created equal I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate and hire around thirty very talented people in the last few months, and it has been a pretty eye-opening experience for a lot of reasons.  Perhaps the most interesting reason is the varying outcomes I have seen from all these new employees.  I have seen some new employees do a fantastic job of integrating themselves with the culture and the team, and → Read More

21
Sep

Why you should insist on taking naps…

Published by adil in Productivity 1 comment

Tweet I read a great article by Tony Schwartz in the Harvard Business review about why companies should insist on their employees napping in the workplace.  Those of you that know me well can imagine my delight! I have been napping consistently for about 4 years now.  I make it a point to trade my lunches for a nap in the middle of the day, and I can’t feel better about it.  In fact, it’s → Read More

18
Sep

A culture of innovation

Published by adil in Creative, Entrepreneurship 1 comment

Tweet I’ve thought a lot lately about innovation and creation.  There are lots of ways that we can try to improve our total creative quality and output as an organization.  The first, and most obvious choice, is to try and find and surround ourselves with innovative people.   We’ve gone from a group of four very talented folks in our office to over fifty in the last four months.  Check.  Now what? Now we have to → Read More

9
Sep

The five stages of creativity are not just for writers…

Published by adil in Creative Reply

Tweet I said in my recent post that creativity an innovation are the key factors of success for entrepreneurial businesses, going forward.  I still mean that.  And the more I think about it, the more I have come to believe that it’s actually true.  If you want to succeed in the incredibly tough marketplace of high-growth technology start-ups, you have to out-innovate your competition. Since I have come to this realization, I have been hunting → Read More

5
Sep

Design thinking

Published by adil in Creative, UX 1 comment

Tweet Designers don’t just ‘throw sparkles.’ In the last post, we explored some of the differences between entrepreneurship today and ten or so years ago.  As I think about how creativity and innovation seem underrated, it gets me to thinking about the way that design is perceived in most organizations. When most people think or talk about design, it seems that they think about the classic definition that was popular many years ago.  To me, → Read More