4 approaches to decision making

Last, to measure progress against this mission, and to know if customers are being served by the team’s existence, they need measures of success. Many companies would consider these objectives, as in a Management By Objectives (MBO) system or an Objectives and Key Results (OKR) system. Call it what you will, but I believe these should be relatively long-lived measurements that tell the story of progress toward the stated mission, versus objectives that change quarterly. For example, when our Infrastructure got started, our build system, which packages our code for deployment to servers, was horribly broken. It could take half a day to build and deploy our software, and half of the time the build would fail for unknown reasons. It was killing developer productivity. So the Infrastructure team took on a measure of “time from code check-in to deployment.” In the short term, it was clear they had some cleanup to do, but over the long term, this is a clear measure of … [Read more...] about The “dozen-bagel” secret to preserving startup spirit as your company grows

Employee data can provide answers to your organization’s D&I questions. With clear answers, you can make talent decisions that improve your entire employee lifecycle. Use data to go beyond blanket numbers and dissect the various factors related to all of your company’s workforce groups. Closely examine your business processes to stay ahead of risks that could negatively impact your diversity efforts and keep leaders accountable. D&I should be a total business initiative, not just an HR initiative.  … [Read more...] about The new top challenge for HR teams: Get comfortable with being uncomfortable

While the circumstances this year will hopefully not be as extreme as 2020, there’s an element of meeting employees where they are that will always be valuable. We’re exploring ways to tweak our process to better allow employees to focus on areas most important to them without bypassing parts of the conversation managers think are important to have. We’re also working on ways to reduce the organizational lift without losing the peer feedback that is so impactful in painting a fuller picture of a person’s contribution. … [Read more...] about How we’re revamping our review process to be kinder on our employees

Lessons from the Wikipedia communityFirst, we must decentralize problem solving and resource allocation. Standardized solutions don’t serve a sprawling and textured society. While it’s essential to have a clear set of goals, such as building a free encyclopedia, the best approaches are adaptable, localized, and responsive to local cultures and conditions. Communities are the best diagnosticians of their needs and challenges, and often the sources of the most creative innovations. The more flexible and open systems are to solutions from the edges, the more adaptable, relevant, and resilient they become, empowering their stakeholders to develop, test, and share their own practices. … [Read more...] about In a fragmented reality, Wikipedia isn’t just a refuge. It’s a roadmap

The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), a nonprofit organization focused on increasing the meaningful participation of girls and women in computing recently released a study, commissioned by Intuit, that explores the role of influence in the workplace. It examines how organizations can create team dynamics that are equitable for women—and, critically, measure the results. The study examined survey responses from 265 technical professionals from NCWIT’s network of member organizations, as well as the results from a qualitative focus group, convened to explore the survey issues more deeply. In the study, half of the participants were women and their average age was 45. … [Read more...] about Why equitable workplaces depend on your team’s makeup (not just outstanding hires)