Square's harassment scandal shows dangers of startup culture - Human Resources

When Square Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois left his job last month, citing legal threats from a young colleague with whom he had a two-year relationship, he threw a spotlight on the risks associated with the freewheeling startup culture that many entrepreneurs cherish.

Startups often thrive on a lack of rules and boundaries. But experts say that as they make the transition from a handful of people in a room to sizeable businesses, the hazards of operating without manual -- including lawsuits, reputational hits, and waning employee morale -- grow exponentially.

Longtime employees sometimes chafe at the arrival of human resources professionals, codes of conduct and other policies that they fear will step on the company's culture. Yet entrepreneurs and start-up investors say they ultimately have little choice.

Take Facebook, which displayed murals of naked women, some riding dogs, in the Palo Alto offices it leased as a small company in 2005. As proud as some of the early employees were of them -- one was painted by the then-girlfriend of Facebook impresario and serial entrepreneur Sean Parker -- they got painted over shortly after venture-capital firm Accel Partners invested in the company. Facebook had no immediate comment.

About a year into the life of New York online-ad tracking startup DoubleVerify, an employee gave a presentation about how advertising

"That was the first time we realized, 'We gotta get a little more institutionalized," recalls founder Oren Netzer. Today, the company has policies concerning naked images. The same presentation would use a less controversial example, or obscure anything racy.

Alcohol is another dicey topic. "We used to have these new employee hazing ceremonies," said Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of San Jose virtualization company Nutanix, largely involving knocking back tequila shots with chili peppers. But once the company hit about 100 employees, some new hires pushed back and he started considering the potential for liability.

"It just faded away about four, five months ago," he said about the hazing. Potential concerns run the gamut from some employees feeling excluded if they don't drink to incidents that sometimes accompany drunken behavior.

At 250-person Canadian social-media management company Hootsuite, "I somewhat infamously have said I never wanted to work at a company with an HR department," founder Ryan Holmes says.

"That's coming back to bite me a little bit now."

Mission statements and HR fluff

A year ago, Holmes made his executive assistant the director of human resources. That type of promote-from-within strategy for HR is commonplace, startups say.

A few months into her role, the new HR director told Holmes the company needed a mission statement. "I said, 'Oh my God, this is HR fluff,'" Holmes remembers. But shortly afterward, when he overheard new hires discussing beliefs he thought were out of step with Hootsuite's ethos -- he says he cannot recall the details -- he realized she was right.

But Holmes says he is resisting conforming on other levels. Hootsuite employees attend teambuilding trips, including a recent stay at a hot-springs resort. That is the type of event big companies cut out -- Google (GOOG) halted its famous all-employee trips in 2009 -- often because of the potential for various kinds of legal liability and cost.

Holmes says he might have to rethink his overnight trips if the company ever goes public, but for now, he plans to keep going. "We think it's very valuable," he says.

At Nutanix, Pandey decided last summer's annual whitewater rafting trip on the Sacramento River would be the last. "We used to go through some rough rapids, and had a couple of close shaves," he said. "A couple of the guys aren't good swimmers."

Part of the philosophy is that young companies want to encourage a "think different" attitude, employees say.

"Start-ups by design want to differentiate themselves from the large companies like the HPs that have very thick employee handbooks," said Brian Samson, chief executive of HR for Startups, referring to Palo Alto computer company Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Start-ups often deal with the inevitable by aiming for a careful, light-footed approach to new policies.

"I've tried to make sure we don't talk about rules," says Evan Wittenberg, HR head at Los Altos cloud-content firm Box. "The language around this really matters. These are guidelines."

Still, there are tensions as the company, which now employs around 700 and is considered a likely prospect for a 2013 initial public offering, grows. Cecilia Wong, people manager at Box, cites the daylong orientation process for new employees.

"I've had some managers ask, 'Why's it a full day? On my first day, it was just an hour, then I could hit the ground running,'" she says. She believes the full day is important for explaining the company culture, business and logistics issues.

Consequences can be dire

Read more via mercurynews.com

What to do next? What are some other signs of trouble in your business?  

In a rapidly changing marketplace, innovation isn’t optional. It’s essential. We’ll teach you how to cultivate innovation within yourself and within your organization. We’re patient experts that will teach you skills and techniques you can apply within your organization to bring powerful ideas forward. We’ll enable you to integrate innovation and competitive strategy into the core of your organization. 

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Ten signs your business is doomed

Illustration: John Shakespeare.

For a second, suspend the bullish self-belief every entrepreneur needs to get through the day. Weigh up whether your business has much of a future.

Then there are the warnings that America's “fiscal cliff” – a raft of looming tax rises and spending cuts - could have global repercussions.

Scary stuff. Here are 10 nitty gritty warning signs to help you decide if your business is doomed.

1. Products you invest in materialize late

Potential threats that can cause your dream to stall abound.

2. You have an internal ownership crisis

3. You have lost touch with technology

4. Key staff are leaving

5. A key client collapsed

6. Management just got a pay rise

7. Next year's fiscal targets are dramatically up

8. You slashed your charity budget

9. You are reliant on a healthy economy

10. You can't sleep

In a rapidly changing marketplace, innovation isn’t optional. It’s essential. We’ll teach you how to cultivate innovation within yourself and within your organization. We’re patient experts that will teach you skills and techniques you can apply within your organization to bring powerful ideas forward. We’ll enable you to integrate innovation and competitive strategy into the core of your organization. 

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Guy Kawasaki: Advice from an Apple Veteran on Making Your Venture Successful

Guy Kawasaki is just like any other Hawaiian-born, hockey-playing, trendsetting, jet-hopping corporate evangelist, entrepreneur, author, columnist, blogger, venture capitalist, new media creator next door. He says success starts with a proper mantra.

“Almost every entrepreneur begins by creating a mission statement. Wrong,” the brash 55-year-old Silicon Valley veteran tells SUCCESS. “Mission statements are too broad and boring. No matter what kind of organization you are starting, what you first need to do is develop a mantra. Keep it two to four words max. You may never have to write your mantra down, publish it in your annual report or print it on posters. Indeed, if you do have to enforce your mantra in these ways, it’s not the right mantra.”
Kawasaki’s personal mantra: “Empower People.” The mantra of Garage Technology Ventures, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm he co-founded and directs, is “We start up startups.” Some other good examples Kawasaki often cites: Target—“Democratizing Design”; Nike—“Authentic Athletic Performance”; or Starbucks— “Rewarding Everyday Moments.”

Of course, the mantra is just one step in starting a business. Kawasaki stays in great demand relating the rest of the story. Author of the best-selling entrepreneurial how-to guide, The Art of the Start, published in 2004, and the detail-packed Reality Check in 2008, he shares lessons forged from his high-flying days at Apple Computer, his own startups and venture capitalist experience.

Finding Meaning
In speeches and interviews, Kawasaki plays off his candid persona, prompting USA Today to refer to him as “a head-banging bruddah from a tough blue-collar neighborhood in Honolulu.”
His books are chock-full of specific advice for entrepreneurs, but ground zero for Kawasaki is “the one question you should ask yourself before starting any new venture: Do I want to make meaning?” That is followed by other queries in the same vein: Do I want to make the world a better place? Increase the quality of life? Right a terrible wrong? Prevent the end of something good?
“We meet with entrepreneurs all the time and they tell us what they think we want to hear, that they want to make money,” he says. “When we hear that, it’s so depressing. It took me 20 years to come to this understanding, but the companies that are successful are the ones who create meaning. Create the next curve; don’t improve on sameness.”
That said, Garage is in a money business, and “revenue is the single-biggest challenge to entrepreneurs today because no one is buying anything,” he says.
“The least likely company to make a sale is a startup,” he says. “In these times, corporate employees are not likely to risk their career buying from a startup. There’s no magical answer on how to overcome that. It takes perseverance.”
While the home run has eluded Garage, it has nurtured a number of success stories, including D.light Design, which makes cheap, solar-powered lights intended for use in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, and individual investor champion The Motley Fool. The firm’s portfolio company, information-sharing site Kaboodle, was sold to the Hearst Corporation. PC Magazine named another client, job search engine and recruitment advertising network Simply Hired, one of its “Top 100 Websites for 2009.”
It’s a very different game today than before the dot-com bust.
“In today’s economy and tight credit markets, there is a much greater emphasis on getting to revenues fast and more emphasis on business models than before,” Kawasaki says. “You also meet companies that are further along. Whereas, a few years ago the accepted practice was you raised a bunch of money, then you went away for a year and built your software. You needed the money to hire people, buy tools and all that kind of stuff.”
It’s Not as Bad as It Seems
Aside from the fact that no one is buying anything, Kawasaki explains this may be one of the best times to start a company. “If you look at the factors a company needs—people, marketing, tools and Web services, storage, bandwidth, those kinds of things—the basics are extremely affordable,” he says. For instance:

• Marketing is basically free with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
• Tools are basically free because of Open Source.
• There is an abundant, cheap workforce because of all the people out of work.
• Inexpensive services are available—with cloud computing, for example, basically for $500 you can get a lot of storage and bandwidth.

“The cost of starting a company is lower than ever, which means you can go longer without venture capital,” he says. “It also means, however, that when you do need venture capitalists, they expect you to show up with more done than just a PowerPoint.”
In addition to Garage and writing books and columns, Kawasaki has set his sights on new media communication as co-founder of Truemors, a free-flow rumor mill Web site that NowPublic acquired in 2008, and Alltop, an “online magazine rack” for the Web that collects and posts the headlines of the latest stories from sites and blogs it considers the “best.”

Click here to learn more
“The content and advertising businesses are very difficult ,” he says. “Someone explained it to me this way: If you look at a tech startup, most people try to go after elephants. A good elephant would be a Salesforce.com kind of company, right? Other people happen to bag whales, such as Google. So you have everyone hunting elephants and whales, but it’s more reasonable to go after deer. A deer is big enough to fi ll you but not so big you kill yourself going after an elephant or a whale. But most tech companies today are going after rabbits and prairie dogs. I can make the case that even more Web companies are going after plankton.”
The greatest benefit of founding Truemors (which cost less than $13,000 to launch) was that it led to Alltop, Kawasaki says. “We noticed so much traffic came from popurls [an Internet aggregator launched in March 2006], which inspired us to do Alltop.” Truemors had no business plan, no venture-capitalist pitch, and only 7 1/2 weeks to launch. He registered 55 domain names. Software development cost $4,500.
Nononina, the company that owns Alltop, is Kawasaki’s “two guys and a gal” garage band—or more accurately, a team consisting of “one guy in home offi ce (Will Mayall), one gal on a kitchen table (Kathryn Henkens) and one Guy in United Airlines seat 2B (Kawasaki).”
The New Information Sage
Alltop, which receives the bulk of Kawasaki’s focus today, tries to offer a robust information shortcut. “There is no such thing as too much information,” he explains. “I think there is no limit to the amount of information you can have. The question is, does it limit you from acting? The amount of information can be beside the point if you don’t have enough courage to make a decision.” Alltop is a snug fit with his internal wiring, which is always searching, learning and regurgitating, living as he directed in his 1999 book, Rules for Revolutionaries: “Eat like a bird; poop like an elephant.”
“It has been a joy to do this company because the blogs and sites are thrilled to be on it,” Kawasaki explains. “For the people who use it, it is like a breath of fresh air. If you were to Google travel, you would get over a billion matches. That’s not really useful. At Alltop, you would get a few hundred where we’ve aggregated and displayed the latest stories. Instead of some computer algorithm, it’s a curated site—a human has decided what should be there.”
Immersion is part of his household’s wiring as well. When Kawasaki’s kids became enamored with hockey after attending a San Jose Sharks game, his wife Beth, whom he met at Apple, insisted that if the kids were going to play, Kawasaki “couldn’t just be one of these venture capitalists on the sideline playing with a BlackBerry and that I had to take an active part.”
Now, if Kawasaki is not traveling, he plays hockey every day of the week. “I play more than they do,” he says.
Hockey analogies pepper his conversations (he often talks about how if he’d accepted the job as Yahoo CEO when it was offered to him in the late ’90s, he could own the San Jose Sharks right now—“what’s a billion here or a billion there?” he playfully asks). One of the things he says he’s learned with Apple, Truemors, and Alltop “is that success is a grind.”
“Many people, especially young people, think success is event-related,” he explains. “You announce. You ship. And then life is good and you go straight to the moon. Instead, what happens is you ship with bugs in the software, and people don’t like your product. Then you fi x and fi x and fix, and you keep shipping.
“I suppose there are some instant successes, but that’s principally an oxymoron. That’s like saying [Pittsburgh Penguins captain] Sidney Crosby was an instant success in the NHL. Well, sure, in his first two years he did very well, but that ignores the 17 previous years he practiced or played hockey five hours a day. There’s no instant there, or here.”
Although he acknowledges he shares the entrepreneurial trait that is always looking for the new thing, the next challenge, not being content to stick to one thing, he insists he can be satisfied.
“If I were to sell Alltop for, say, $10 million, I would disappear from the face of the earth,” he says with a laugh. “You’d never see me again.”
His track record indicates otherwise. via success.com

Using Facebook To Engage With Staff at Canada’s Cara Restaurants - Social Media

The Cara network of restaurants uses an application on Facebook called the Staff Room for associates to share stories about restaurant service and tips about managing their jobs.

In corporations with a franchisee network, social tools can be used to effect change in front-line behaviors, even when these front-line employees do not work directly for the organization.

Natasha Nelson is vice president of business intelligence at Cara Operations, a Canadian restaurant chain with five brands and 700 franchisees. When Nelson joined Cara, the CEO asked her to engage the company’s associates to improve service delivery on the front lines.

The problem was that the associates worked for the franchisees, not corporate. Many associates were young, worked part-time, and for some, this was their first job. There was a high degree of turnover. Yet this group was an important factor in determining the quality of the customer experience. How could Cara engage this group in a way that was simple and easy, and use that engagement to improve front-line service?

Nelson researched the problem and found little assistance. An article from one of the leading technology research firms advised against using Facebook to engage with employees. She explored using a portal technology platform, but could not find a way to drive associates to use it since they were not typical information workers. Eventually, Nelson’s IT department partnered with HR and marketing to develop a strategy built upon a Facebook application:

The associates all have it on their mobile devices, and go onto Facebook anyway every day. That’s how they communicate, that’s how they stay in touch. So we decided to use a platform that they already are on and that they know and love.

We launched this very, very slowly, starting at 12 locations of one of our more upscale brands, Milestones. We launched an application on Facebook, called the Staff Room, where we encouraged the associates to share stories about restaurant service and tips about managing their jobs. We are trying to encourage a hospitality gene, qualities that everyone should aspire to, like love serving people.

From this pilot we decided to make the Staff Room into a peer-to-peer recognition platform, because the center point of our strategy is guest experience. We’ll celebrate associate stories connected with the hospitality gene. More importantly, we’ll let staff recognize one another. Because their friends and family are also on their Facebook page, they’ll be recognized by them too.

We believe that this will be very powerful. People will share stories of how they’ve improved the guest experience; and their peers, friends and family will recognize them.

[Excerpted from part 6 of the 2012 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project, conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review with Deloitte.]

Posted in: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, managing people, Social Business, Special Report: Social Business via sloanreview.mit.edu

Jim Woods is a strategy consultant and CEO of InnoThink Group. Leading advisors on strategy and innovation helping leaders make decisions based on innovative and unconventional insight. Read more.

Leadership Made Simple - Ten things you should do as a leader |

Why should things be so complicated? If you browse books on amazon.com and search for leadership you will get 90264 hits. Much is written about leadership and more will come, but is there really that much magic to being a leader? Today I will try to make a short list of things that are important as a leader. Feel free to add additional points in the comments section.

1. Have a clear vision
   Put 30 people in the middle of a wilderness and tell them; “let’s be the best!” As an alternative to that – Explain the map, give them the direction and time limits, or even better, give them the map and let them find the best route to your goal. How can your staff know what to do if you do not have a clear vision of where you are going? And yes, you need to tell them, because mind reading is still not a part of the general humans DNA.
2. Respect your employees
   Yes, it needs to be said. A lot of leaders look down on their staff, you are dealing with people, and as soon as you realize this and know a little about psychology, you will understand that people are capable of doing great things. You used to be people once too. Be very careful about how you market your staff to the world around you.
3. Communicate what you expect
   Back to the wilderness at point one. If your staff is going to survive you must make sure they know, that today is about walking in the wilderness, they need good boots, warm clothes, and you expect them to get to the camp before lunch. And if someone shows up in slippers send them home. My point is that for people to be able to understand what is expected they need to know. I have had a job where I was wondering if I did a good job, if I was going in the right direction, is this what is expected? What is important? And yes, I quit that job as I felt bad, even though the boss told me afterwards that I did a good job… imagine that, how would I know? Well I always do my best to be honest, but if you are Usain Bolt and run the opposite way in the Olympics, you might run as fast and far as you will, it might even be the best run ever, but it will never be a world record.
4. Make time for your staff
   Make time in your calendar for your staff. You might be going to a bunch of meetings with different departments, managers and with your boss. But to get results, there is one meeting you should not skip. Make at least 30 minutes a month with each employee – to talk. About results, expectations, how they are doing, are they happy and so on. This talk has a purpose, and it is a talk about their performance and goals.
5. Give the right feedback, at the right time
   Negative feedback – one on one, positive feedback, also one on one maybe… The “old” line is, praise in public, and criticize one on one. But you need to know your staff, some people want to be on public television giving a speech if they did something good (most men) – and some would rather be in a coffin, six feet under, than being the center of attention. You need to know what motivates them, how they like to be praised and when you should praise/criticize the team or individuals. Remember that an individual success might come because of the support of the team or other people. There is nothing more demotivated than listening to a boss praising the asshole that held the presentation you spent hours on making.
6. Be inspirational
   Instead of telling your staff about the exact number on the bottom line, try to tell them how you are going to improve it. Accountants should never present the numbers; it will make your staff fall asleep. Listening to the specifics of a car is boring, hearing a story about how it is to drive is better; getting to drive it is the best. As a leader you might have to present boring stuff, but do you have to make it boring too? Talk in pictures, talk about what you need to do, to get to your goal, and be enthusiastic. Leadership is not about wearing a nice suit and be boring.
7. Make things happen
   Depending on where you are in the leadership chain of command, and what tools you have been given. But your job as a leader is also to get things to happen. Your staff creates results, but you are supposed to get the stuff your staff needs. It might be new equipment, making sure that the IT-department fixes your departments troubles first. Feeling stuck is very demotivating, your job as a leader is to show that things are happening even, the small steps that take you in the right direction. Are you a middle manager, you also need to get things through to the top level management team to get things to happen.
8. Have some fun
   A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question.
   The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath, and stopped centimeters from a shop window.
   For a second everything went quiet in the cab, then the driver said: “Look mate, don’t ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!”
   The passenger apologized and said, “I didn’t realize that a little tap would scare you so much.”
   The driver replied, “Sorry, it’s not really your fault. Today is my first day as a cab driver – I’ve been driving a van carrying dead bodies for the last 25 years…..(40 more or less fun stuff to do at work)
9. Get out of the way
   Some leaders are never to be seen, and other get in on everything. Do not micromanage; guess you hired the best people in the first place? Give them what they need to do a good job, sit back, read my blog to pass time and given the right direction and tools, they will perform. Football managers do not play the field, neither should you!
10. Be human
    It is ok to: be home when you are sick, take a day off when you need to recharge your batteries, to show emotions, to smile, have a bad day at work, and let people know. By being human, you will show your staff that they too can be human, it will prevent burnouts. Show that you care, even about their life outside your job.

You will get a long way being a leader, as long as you realize that you deal with people. There is one thing I left out of the list that is important. On Amazon there are more than 90.000 books for you to read about leadership. Leadership is a journey; you will never have enough knowledge. There is always room for improvement, and you should do your best to improve all the time. Leadership is about learning. Life is about learning, but I guess you already knew that.
via nevermindthemanager.com 

Stephen Covey On Leadership - Why Character Matters More Than Personality

via youtube.com

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What I Have Come to Believe About Management and Innovation

Processes change swiftly.
Management seldom if ever changes at all.
Management always redirects blame.
Success is permanent
“What got us here will keep us here.” 

The curse of success is that people try to codify it. Former IBM CEO, Lou Gerstner has said.“My view is that you perpetuate success by continuing to run scared, not by looking back at what made you great, but looking forward at what is going to make you ungreat, so that you are constantly focusing on the challenges that keep you humble, hungry and nimble.”

Doesn’t it amaze you that with all the discussions on innovation, new ideas and strategies, processes that amplify customer and employee engagement that organizations punctuate their work with methodology from retired or deceased CEO’s and gurus  whose ideas were for then not now?  Why is it that we all agree that we are now in a world of unprecedented hypercompetition yet can’t wait to employ yesterday’s strategies that were successful yesterday?

Is there really any wonder that in most all organizations things remain the same?

Is there really any wonder that in most all organizations things remain the same? To innovate management you have to encourage employees to challenge management and organizational dogma. You have to perpetually aspire to be a contrarian to be willing to learn a new DNA of questioning authority. JW


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Holy Toledo - In another long boring meeting on innovation.

In a long, long meeting thinking. If I were at the helm, I'd fire everyone but the girl at the front desk. I think she is the only one who gets it around here. This stuff isn't rocket science. Just fire all the consultants and middle managers to get down to accelerating customer expectations.
How can you truly be an innovative company if you and HR do your best to abolish the “revolutionaries, rebels, zany, weird, freaky, and “Hey boss this is a STUPID idea” people? Jim Woods

P.S. Human resources are the least innovative people in an organization with an opportunity to hire the most innovative people in an organization. 
I have got a boatload more ideas here - at "Boatload of ideas." 

Meg Whitman and HP's Woefully Inept Leadership - Ready. Aim. Layoff

There is something woefully unsettling about a HP paying CEO Meg Whitman $15 million when said company failed to MAKE A PROFIT only to INCREASE REVENUES by laying off workers instead of “Invent. Reinvent. Repeat.”

Read Market Watch article on other HP executives who received enormous "performance based" compensation only for cutting costs by eliminating employees. Seems to be a recurring theme over the years for many companies. HP's motto was once the stuff of legend, "Invent. Reinvent. Repeat." No longer. How can a company of any kind expect loyalty and innovation from employees and customers when their only path to growth isn't innovation but rewarding executives whose only talent is reckless downsizing? 

Oh, what a slippery slope boards and shareholders seek to climb without long term rewards. HP for example has a parade of CEO's with minuscule returns for years. 

While this behavior isn’t new by any means, one would have expected HP to strive for a higher standard.

Employees build companies. Employee layoffs don’t require skill. Any idiot can subscribe to that low level of “leadership” and management. HP’s way forward Ms. Whitman remains in its motto: Invent. Reinvent. Repeat. JW

Like more information on Jim Woods and InnoThink Group Consultants click here. 

 

Meg Whitman and HP's Woefully Inept Leadership - Ready. Aim. Layoff

There is something woefully unsettling about a HP paying CEO Meg Whitman $15 million when said company failed to MAKE A PROFIT only to INCREASE REVENUES by laying off workers instead of “Invent. Reinvent. Repeat.”

Read Market Watch article on other HP executives who received enormous "performance based" compensation only for cutting costs by eliminating employees. Seems to be a recurring theme over the years for many companies. HP's motto was once the stuff of legend, "Invent. Reinvent. Repeat." No longer. How can a company of any kind expect loyalty and innovation from employees and customers when their only path to growth isn't innovation but rewarding executives whose only talent is reckless downsizing? 

Oh, what a slippery slope boards and shareholders seek to climb without long term rewards. HP for example has a parade of CEO's with minuscule returns for years. 

While this behavior isn’t new by any means, one would have expected HP to strive for a higher standard.

Employees build companies. Employee layoffs don’t require skill. Any idiot can subscribe to that low level of “leadership” and management. HP’s way forward Ms. Whitman remains in its motto: Invent. Reinvent. Repeat. JW

Like more information on Jim Woods and InnoThink Group Consultants click here.