Stuff you must read today (Sun, 1 Apr 2018) – The Hiring Edition (Part I)

  • Adam Grant On Interviewing to Hire Trailblazers, Nonconformists and Originals | First Round Review
    “By default, companies are built in the image of their founders, which is why it’s vital to proactively introduce diversity of thought… ‘What happens when startups get successful and grow is that they become more and more vulnerable to the attraction-selection-attrition cycle, where people of the same stripes are increasingly drawn to the organization, chosen by it and retained at it. The way to combat that homogeneity creep is to proactively infuse the culture with originals, who have the will and skill to think differently'”.
  • How to Hire | eShares
    Four principles and six heuristics on hiring. Some of them are counter-intuitive, and all of them turn what we think we know about hiring on its head.
  • Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, & Promote | @DrSepah
    The writer presents a powerful Performance Value Matrix based on the following with the following categories and rules: Incompetent Assholes (Fire Fast); Competent Assholes (Remediate or Separate); Incompetent Nice Guys (Manage or Move); Competent and Outstanding Nice Guys (Praise and Raise).

    The Performance-Values Matrix – Performance behaviour against values-congruent behaviour by Dr Cameron Sepah

  • The No Asshole Rule: Part 1 | HuffPost
    There are myriad costs to keeping employees who engage in demeaning behaviour in an organisation: From how detrimental they are to the mental and physical health of their colleagues, to the overall undermining of learning and organisational effectiveness.
  • Why I Wrote The No Asshole Rule | Harvard Business Review
    “My father always told me to avoid assholes at all costs, no matter how rich or powerful they might be, because I would catch their nastiness and impose it on others. I learned, as an organizational psychologist, that his advice is supported by research on ’emotional contagion’: if you work for a jerk, odds are you will become one”.

Stuff you must read today (Sat, 4 Mar 2017) – The Leadership and Management Edition

Reinventing the office line

These office items and gadgets, some of which were on the cutting edge in 1988, now all fit on a smartphone. Well, except for the coffee. Photo by Buck Ennis.
These office items and gadgets, some of which were on the cutting edge in 1988, now all fit on a smartphone. Well, except for the coffee. Photo by Buck Ennis.

So you know how I like to predict how and why technology should change to cleave to our modern ways of living, right?

Hence, for my next trick, I’m going to ask: Technological powers-that-be, when are we going to turn our office numbers into work numbers for the mobile?

And mind you, I’m not talking about call forwarding.

I’m referring to an actual office line that can be combined with our present personal mobile phone line – but which we can choose to switch off when we’re out of the office.

Think about it. To create a clear divide between the professional and the personal, we have:

  • Personal e-mail addresses and office e-mail addresses; and
  • Personal phone lines and office phone lines.

Before the advent of mobile data technology, office tools were often fixed, and we had to enter the office to use those specific tools.

Now, we can do almost everything on the go; we can make personal calls on our mobile phones, and check our personal and office e-mail on the same device.

So at which point did companies say: “Hey! We’re gonna stop developing technology for office phone lines because there is no need to.”?

Because of this – lapse? change of focus? – we now have work-based communication taking place on our personal lines.

Some examples: Whatsapp office group chat messages, or text messages and voice calls from clients.

It’d be nice to have the option of setting “away from office” auto-replies on our work phone lines when on leave or after leaving the office, so we can draw a distinction between work and leisure.

Therefore, I’m calling this right here, right now, Lare-style: There’s a portion of the technology that’s lagging behind everything else when it comes to the modern office telephone line.

Technological powers-that-be, please do something about it. You’ll more than reap the rewards when everyone starts adopting this service.