Great piece on bonuses. Great to hear self determination theory get a mention too. To often firms try and buy their way out of giving autonomy,feeling of progression and purpose through retention payments.
The return to work is an interesting debate and I'm saddened by the exponential rise of regressive managemt practices that demonstrate a lack of trust and an infered presenteeism that doesn't feel future focussed at all. The approach seems to be hankering back to the building of physical empires and the re-inflation of egos deflated through COVID.
Since I'm no manager, I can't figure out why it's so difficult to manage people working remotely... For me is the trust. Managers have a hard time trusting that employees are typing away 99% of the time, like we're all still in an assembly line making toys.
I also found interesting the dependency graphs. I'm currently in multiple teams of more than 5 people. No wonder it's so hard to know what people are working on.
Cheeky question: could the difference between large companies and smaller ones be that a lot of these smaller companies are VC-funded and care more about employee engagement than value for customers?
Brilliant piece as ever Bruce. The key focus on Trust & culture is critical imho. On that, I was reminded the other day about a brilliant quote by Vaclav Havel: "Seek the company of those who are looking for truth - run from those who have found it". Going to do a wee post on that when I get a minute too!
I am always skeptical about raging reviews of calendar purges; sure, we have done it as well at Dropbox (although that was before I joined so I have no first-hand experience). But I believe the number of meetings per employee is not necessarily an important metric for measuring organisational effectiveness. It is often said that remote work increased the number of meetings but that is to be expected because even a coffee chat with a colleague is now a calendar invite. Instead of measuring meetings to assess company health, companies should measure how much time their employees spend on "deep work" - and make sure there's enough room for that!
Great piece on bonuses. Great to hear self determination theory get a mention too. To often firms try and buy their way out of giving autonomy,feeling of progression and purpose through retention payments.
The return to work is an interesting debate and I'm saddened by the exponential rise of regressive managemt practices that demonstrate a lack of trust and an infered presenteeism that doesn't feel future focussed at all. The approach seems to be hankering back to the building of physical empires and the re-inflation of egos deflated through COVID.
I have a hybrid team and it works very well.
This was a great read!
Since I'm no manager, I can't figure out why it's so difficult to manage people working remotely... For me is the trust. Managers have a hard time trusting that employees are typing away 99% of the time, like we're all still in an assembly line making toys.
I also found interesting the dependency graphs. I'm currently in multiple teams of more than 5 people. No wonder it's so hard to know what people are working on.
Cheeky question: could the difference between large companies and smaller ones be that a lot of these smaller companies are VC-funded and care more about employee engagement than value for customers?
Brilliant piece as ever Bruce. The key focus on Trust & culture is critical imho. On that, I was reminded the other day about a brilliant quote by Vaclav Havel: "Seek the company of those who are looking for truth - run from those who have found it". Going to do a wee post on that when I get a minute too!
I am always skeptical about raging reviews of calendar purges; sure, we have done it as well at Dropbox (although that was before I joined so I have no first-hand experience). But I believe the number of meetings per employee is not necessarily an important metric for measuring organisational effectiveness. It is often said that remote work increased the number of meetings but that is to be expected because even a coffee chat with a colleague is now a calendar invite. Instead of measuring meetings to assess company health, companies should measure how much time their employees spend on "deep work" - and make sure there's enough room for that!