Archive for the ‘ Uncategorized ’ Category
Okay—this kicks ass. It is a wiki-based visualization of org charts in companies. So if you want to see who Jeff Bell at MSFT reports to, you can look it up. Very clever application, and has a lot of potential as a visualization tool of user-edittable (not edible) content.
Yay for the launch of the Google Testing Blog !
Congrats Toilet Testers!
I’ve had a fever for the past few days. I had a sore throat last Thursday but though it was all going away. I have no idea what bug I have, but it is really starting to get old. I’m bumming around the house and napping all day.
Over 4,000 people read my GTD Whitepaper in two days. I’m glad it was noteworthy and helpful to so many of you. I will be committing some new changes and additions soon, a lot of great feedback and questions have come to me via the 43Folders Board, which is a fantastic discussion group for GTD users.
A lot of the feedback has been surrounding DEVONthink, which almost magically makes sense of a vast library of reference material I’ve accumulated over a decade. Apparently there is no parallel for Windows users. There are a ton of information managers for Mac OS X and a few good ones for Windows, but nothing, and I mean nothing, comes close to DEVONthink Pro. It is the most invaluable research tool I have.
So what happens on a sick day?
I still follow office emails and home emails, and I do lightweight project work. My @home context card gets whittled away leaving only things that require more brain power and motor skill. It is a great day to catch up on my !later tag on del.icio.us, and catch up on low-priority things.
I can flip through Someday/Maybe for something easy later. Most of the active projects I have right now require coordination and/or a fully functioning brain.
I was recently chatting with some people on IRC (#joiito@freenode) about a program my employer has for allowing peer-to-peer bonuses and compensation for rewarding your coworkers that do you a solid. Apparently it isn’t as common as I had hoped.
So without going into too much detail, I have written about the finer points of this program. In short, it is a fantastic way to show your appreciation for your peers and your subordinates in the company, and we all love it. Think of it as personal bonus system for rewarding people you work with that has little oversight and no red-tape or a lengthy baby-sitting process.
My employer has a program in the office using a company called ECount which gives everyone in the company a Visa debit card. That in and of itself isn’t remarkable. You can opt to have some of your payroll go into that for budgetary reasons or whatever, but the really cool thing about this program we have is that you can do peer-to-peer nominations for cash awards or very easily give those working under you a nice bonus for busting their humps on your behalf.
Everyone in the company is empowered to give another person up to USD$50 as an award for doing something awesome. You can also nominate someone for bigger awards, but these require managerial approval. This is a great team-building exercise because people know that if they do something really great to help someone out that its likely that they’ll be seeing some cash from this.
This isn’t to say that everyone expects it. In my opinion this program is pretty heavily under-utilized in my office, but I’ve heard that some of our other offices eat it up. What it does certainly accomplish though, is foster teamwork and build a habit of helping each other and lending a hand whenever you can. In my office almost everyone is a total machine. We work long and hard and bust our asses. This isn’t to say that we’re all criminally over-worked and under-paid. In all honesty I’d say our compensation hovers high above average, without being over-the-top. The upside to this is that I can’t say we’ve ever had a round of layoffs in our business unit. We work hard, we produce, and we do things that others claim are impossible.
So while our management is diligent about awarding us come review time to the best of their abilities in the form of bonuses and pay raises, the supplemental peer-to-peer bonus system works great for a variety of reasons.
Considering that when someone is working their ass off for a week at the expense of seeing their spouse or kids as much as they’d like to, having someone you were helping out say “Hey you didn’t have to work so hard this week, I’m really glad you did, you rock,” and getting them some money to go out to dinner with their spouse or take their kids to the movies “on the house” is one of those perks that we’ve all come to really appreciate.
Since its a Visa card you can use it for just about anything. Use it via PayPal to buy yourself something cool off eBay you’ve been looking for, take it to mall, go out to dinner, buy a present for your SO since they were so understanding and supportive, whatever you want.
Someone suggested to me today that this sounds like a bribe. I can honestly say I’ve never heard these awards being held over anyones head: they’re not expected or used as a way to convince people to do things for you. They’re not a form of bribery. They are a way to say “hey, what you did? that was awesome,” and not only give them a high-five but also give them a little something extra. But what this does do is become learned behavior. You are reinforcing your team and those you work with, and when you help each other out, you are able to actually give a high-five that pays.
When you nominate someone for this award at my office, it is done via the company Intranet and you fill out the form, the name of the employee and get a chance to write something up about what they did and why they are so great, as well as the amount you think they should get.
So additionally, when the award is completed and approved (we can self-approve up to USD$50, like I said, so it turns around in a matter of a day or so), the explanation is sent out as well, letting you not only reward your co-workers hard work and effort personally, but they get the added bonus of being able to read about how you think they’re doing a great job. Larger awards take a little bit longer usually because they require another “signature” or sign-off, so if someone really blows your mind you can make sure their management knows about it in the form of a fatter award.
We expect greatness and amazing things in our organization so these jumbo awards aren’t super common, but they do happen. When they do, I can guarantee you that a huge effort was involved since we’re all plenty busy doing a million other things that are all MISSION CRITICAL SUPER IMPORTANT.
Those are the kinds of “validation receipts” that I like to review now and then after a long hard week of getting kicked in the stomach. When I start to feel apathetic and overwhelmed, I can just surf my filed nominations and I’m instantly reminded that the things I do matter, make a difference, and are recognized.
Or at least that they have been in the past, and if I’d like to be recognized again one day, I better get my ass in gear. It is awfully hard work changing the world, you know. In a big company it is easy sometimes to feel like you’re a cog in this great machine that has no visibility, and it can be difficult at times to see the forest for the trees. This program helps ameliorate that “tree factor” quite a bit.
Since I have never worked anywhere before that had a program quite like this one, I figured it would be worth sharing with other people so that they can take it to their HR folks and try to get something started like it on their own. I’m not sure what types of programs are available from ECount but I’m sure they have several options.
My employer primarily uses these awards to enforce the code of conduct values my employer has. I’ve worked a lot of place that have so-called Mission Statements and Values that every employee is supposed to know, but this is the first company I’ve worked at where the employees all know what they actually are, and what they mean. You can walk up to anyone in the company and ask them what our Core Values are and they’ll know. This transcends the mere recitation of these values because they are actually recognized and rewarded by people you actually have face-time with in the office and those you share a project with. In short: this program works. It is easier to feel like you’re part of a real honest-to-God team when the people you directly impact have the ability to actually let you know with a nice note and some bonus cash to boot.
I strongly believe that this program has paid off everything it has cost us hand over fist, and that it is one of the best investments my employer has ever made. Second of course, only to the brilliant people we have on staff who stick around thanks to programs such as this.