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How to measure productivity at your office

12/12/2017

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Employers of yore had it so easy.

Actually, forget yore. Employers from just a few decades ago had it pretty easy too.

Here’s why: During the manufacturing boom, it was simple for companies to measure productivity. The factory setting allowed for quantifiable tracking of inputs and outputs, and for many years the following formula reigned supreme as the primary determinant of a team’s productivity:

Number of outputs (e.g. products) ÷ number of inputs (e.g. resources involved in producing the outputs) X 100% = the workforce’s productivity rate

Easy peasy, right?

It certainly is—if your business entails running a factory. If you don’t fall into that camp, things get a little more complicated.

As anyone who has spent time in a modern office can attest, determining the inputs and outputs involved in a day’s work can be wildly challenging. There are so many seemingly unquantifiable factors involved, from policies and processes that may influence an employee’s work flow, to relationships between coworkers that can help or hinder efficiency. Plus, most employees perform a variety of tasks, many of which may not be quantifiable.

Despite these challenges, measuring employee productivity is important. Among other benefits, keeping track of productivity allows you to identify opportunities to improve processes, acknowledge employees’ performance, set realistic goals, and track your team’s progress over time.

The question then becomes: How can employers and employees effectively measure productivity—and enjoy all the benefits that come along with doing so—in an office setting instead of in a factory?

Thankfully, it’s easier than it sounds. These five strategies are a great place to start.

Establish a baseline
Measuring productivity is a process of comparison: You compare how much an employee or a team produces, in relationship to how little would be produced if team members didn’t inhabit their respective roles. Sometimes you compare a given employee’s productivity directly against the productivity of an employee in a similar role. Other times, you compare your team’s results to industry averages. In order to make these comparisons, you first need to establish a baseline of whatever it is you’re comparing to.

For example, if you run a sales team or call center, you could divide the average number of daily sales or customer calls by the number of employees to determine how many calls each of your employees averages each day. You can then use this as a baseline to determine who is fielding more or less than the average. (Of course, the baseline shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all to determine a team member’s productivity—after all, quantity rarely beats quality.)

This process can get trickier if you work in a more administrative setting where each employee has a different role and their tasks are less quantifiable. In these cases, it’s still important to establish a baseline. For example, you may consider breaking projects into assigned tasks so you can track how well employees stay on top of their work (more on that in the next tip).

​No matter how you determine a baseline, try to avoid using the number of hours worked, the number of sick days taken, or the number of vacation days used. These metrics don’t necessarily have any relation to the quality or effectiveness of a given employee’s work. 
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Define tasks                                            
A simple way to measure productivity is to clearly define tasks and then track whether, and with what expediency, those tasks are completed.

This is a great way to make sure you don’t fall into the micromanaging trap, because it focuses more on outcomes than it does on the minutiae of daily responsibilities. It also allows you to measure employees’ ability to meet deadlines, which can be a useful performance metric. Just make sure you don’t simply assign tasks for the tasks’ sake. Tasks should offer real value to the company for them to have significance as a performance indicator.
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One other caveat: Using tasks to track productivity requires that those tasks be assigned effectively in the first place. Make sure managers communicate exactly what deliverables are expected for a certain assignment and when those deliverables are due, as well as any other information relevant to completing the task effectively and efficiently. Only when this information has been provided is it reasonable to expect a team member to follow through on the assignment. 
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Identify benchmarks
Once you establish a baseline set of metrics and tasks to measure productivity, it’s time to figure out how you’ll track these metrics over time. Presumably, your goal is for employees to meet or exceed the baseline on a regular basis—so you need to determine benchmarks that help you identify what qualifies as “exceeding” the baseline and help you notice if your employees stagnate in their roles.

Just as when you established your baseline metrics, it’s important to take a multidimensional approach to setting benchmarks. For example, you may establish a benchmark for X number of sales successfully closed, X number of professional presentations delivered, X number of software functions coded, etc. Then, throw in some subjective outcomes to get a better sense of the whole picture. That may include things such as feedback from customer satisfaction or peer surveys, or the team member’s ability to collaborate, think creatively, problem solve, and so on.

The important thing is to develop as broad a picture as you can and then use this information in a constructive way—not a punitive one. If an employee appears to be stagnating, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re unproductive. It may mean their manager fails to communicate assignments clearly, another employee’s bad work habits inhibit their productivity, they’re a better fit for a slightly different role, or something else entirely. Benchmarks provide a valuable data set, but it’s important to look beyond them to really understand why an employee does or does not maintain their productivity.
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No matter what benchmarks you decide to move forward with, it’s helpful to assign a time period by which certain benchmarks should be met. Different benchmarks require different time periods ranging from daily to weekly, monthly, quarterly, and even annually. Establishing these timelines is essential because it allows team members to know how they’re being assessed and encourages managers to set realistic expectations for their teams. 
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Encourage employee participation
If you want your office’s productivity metrics to be valuable, it’s essential to involve your team members when crafting baseline metrics, defining tasks, and identifying reasonable benchmarks. After all, these team members have the most accurate sense of what it takes to accomplish a given task, what is a reasonable amount of work to complete in a given time in their individual roles, and so on. This helps explain why one study found that employees who participate in crafting their productivity metrics are most likely to demonstrate increased productivity over time.

Engaging your employees in this process also gives them a chance to identify the resources they need to thrive in their respective roles. The key is to listen when employees tell you what resources would enable them to do their jobs better, and then invest in fulfilling those needs. For example, if an employee tells you they’d be more productive working from home two days each week or that a certain part of their job could be automated, give them a chance to prove themselves right.
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By treating your team members as autonomous individuals who know a lot about their jobs, you’ll simultaneously improve morale (which has been linked to heightened productivity in its own right) and empower your team members to take their productivity into their own hands.
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​Regularly reevaluate how you measure productivity
Identifying and tracking productivity benchmarks isn’t a one-time thing. Instead, the way you measure productivity should constantly evolve depending on whether the baselines change, certain benchmarks have been achieved, key team members leave or new team members are hired, industry norms or standards shift, and so on. Because there are so many moving parts involved in productivity, it’s essential to continually redefine all these parts to make sure you accurately perceive and evaluate the bigger picture.
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​Attempts to track productivity shouldn’t feel like a draconian way to police employees’ every move. Instead, each of these steps should be taken with buy-in and feedback from your team members so everyone can understand their priorities individually and collectively. By creating a company culture that emphasizes respectful collaboration, assigns job duties to the individual performing them, and creates and executes effective processes, you’ll give morale a boost and empower your employees to be their most productive. 

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​Megan Palmer is the PR Director at ZeroCater . A news junkie and networker, she loves to discover great stories and the amazing people behind them.  In her free time, you’ll find her off chasing the sun (and really great sushi).  
 
Founded in 2009, ZeroCater is a San Francisco-based startup with a mission to help companies build high-performing cultures through food so they can hire, retain and make top talent productive. Arram Sabeti founded ZeroCater after realizing firsthand the pain points of organizing office meals. ZeroCater makes office catering and snacks simple through dedicated account managers, top-notch restaurant partners, and technology that allows for a seamless process and in-depth insight. Currently, ZeroCater provides office catering and snack services in San Francisco; New York; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Austin and Los Angeles.

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Happy birthday, here’s a falcon: How to build a culture of dreamers

11/6/2017

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In today’s hiring climate, few things are quite as important as culture. It is the fabric that holds together your company; the slippery trait that makes or breaks the quality of an employee’s  typical day. With only 32% of employees engaged, it becomes all the more important to find ways to create meaningful experiences for your employees, to keep them inspired and willing to stick around. By the numbers, frequently engaged employees are not only 12x less likely to leave, but they are way more productive (up to 4x!), leading to satisfied workers and better business.

In one way or another, most people professionals know this, and put in the effort to make work a refreshing and motivating place to be. But oftentimes reward programs or happy hours are a notch short of that warm, nougaty, fulfillment that we all aim for. People participate, but leave with little more than free food or gear. We’ve been fortunate to meet, work with, and talk to a lot of the best culture-builders around, and we’re here to share some of their thoughts on what makes a stand-out culture.

It’s more than just time together

In an ideal workplace, your colleagues are your friends, and you enjoy spending time together. To achieve this, the best opportunities for forming relationships come from more than just the occasional get-together. Relationships blossom when people find themselves enjoying a new experience; when they can be exposed to something that makes them feel slightly vulnerable, and rewarded by celebrating that moment with one another. Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, says it well:

“If you can belong out of your comfort zone and something new happens to you, then there's going to be a moment    of transformation where the person you were in a small way dies and a new better version of yourself is reborn.” [1]

Culture budgets provide a rare opportunity for you to create a shared hero’s journey for your colleagues; to have them experience overcoming a new and exciting challenge together. In fact, my co-founder and I met from exactly this type of initiative. We worked together at Webflow, where every other week our team participated in interesting and unfamiliar activities, coordinated by our amazing operations manager. We learned how to surf together, how to make cocktails together, and more. These “mini” journeys helped us grow and brought us closer, leading to the friendship we have today.
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It’s personal

A culture is reflection of the values of a company, its founders, and--eventually--all of the people who work there. So it makes sense that instead of a cookie-cutter approach to community, we make efforts to grow people as individuals, in ways that are deeply personal to them. When done well, this allows them to not only find fulfilling community or work, but to feel cared for as an individual.

Our favorite story about personal culture comes from our rock-star friend Emma, who has been responsible for onboarding and operations at a number of Denver companies. As part of her company onboarding, she likes to ask each new employee about their childhood dreams, and what they want(ed) to be when they are older. When possible, she fuses this into company events. One particular colleague had dreamt of being a falconer, a la my side of the mountain. On his birthday, he was nearly moved to tears when a falconer burst into the conference room, bird on arm, and spent the next few hours helping him and everyone else learn to handle    a falcon.
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See a future here

The above points, particularly combined with substantial work, make a for a culture where people feel challenged and rewarded. Socially, people grow by learning new skills outside of their comfort zone, and bonding over these shared moments. Individually, one feels cared for, and loyal to a group of people that goes out of their way to consider their interests. While not every company can bring an apex predator into their office, there are plenty of smaller opportunities to create this connection, and show that the company is invested on a personal level. This can create a hopeful environment, where people are excited about what’s ahead.

Ultimately, it is practices like these that make for a world-class culture, and a company where someone can really imagine a future for themselves.

Interested in trying your hand at some of the creative mojo described above? Sign up to Zestful for free to see how we can help, or check out our tips on team building.

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Mat Vogels is the Founder of Zestful. He enjoys new ideas, good movies, and helping people find their awesome.

Zestful is your company for booking team activities. With a marketplace of unique activities for groups, it is simple to find amazing options for your next outing. Zestful’s software and Slack bot makes it easy to book in 30 seconds or less, and helps you with details like voting, event reminders, talking to vendors, adding catering, and more!


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A Zenefits Update with Sarah Blanchard, VP of Customer Engagement

7/15/2017

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Zenefits, the company that introduced a modern HR software platform, has some mega fans, and some harsh critics in the OrgOrg community. As an organization, we like to remain vendor-neutral, and we're excited for the opportunity to talk personally with Zenefits about where they are today, and how they're addressing some of the most frequent issues customers face. We spoke with Sarah Blanchard, Zenefits’ Vice President of Customer Engagement to get the scoop.

Q1: Zenefits has been through a lot of changes in the last few years. What are you focusing on right now?
Yes, we certainly have. I joined Zenefits over three years ago as the fourth member of our Support Team, and have been customer-facing since. I’ve seen it all from the front lines, and am the first to acknowledge that, historically, we sometimes fell short. However, our commitment to our customers is steadfast – we work hard to put the customer first in all that we do. One of our top initiatives is improving customer experience; this means enhancing our product offerings and improving ease of use, as well as focusing on how to provide better support and advisory services. We’re excited to continue to bring the voice of the customer into everything we do.

Q2: What are some of the really hard lessons you’ve learned?
Today, Zenefits is a fundamentally different company --in almost every way. We’ve taken these challenges as an opportunity to evaluate our company, our values, our culture, our products, and our support from top to bottom. We’re now a much stronger company, and a better, more responsive partner to our customers. We see this in our own data like reduced customer support ticket volume, faster support resolution times, and improved customer satisfaction surveys...and we hear it daily in our interactions with customers. I’ll focus on a few of the top lessons learned:
  1. We’re not only a technology company trying to disrupt insurance, but also a true insurance broker, operating in a highly regulated industry...and we didn’t have our ducks in a row the way they needed to be. The silver lining is we’re now one step ahead on everything as it relates to compliance, and have been able to share these learnings with our customers through our products and services, and with other companies through the free Licensing+ Salesforce application we created.
  2. There is a fine line between iterating on customer experience, and fundamentally changing customer experience. We need to do a better job of proactively communicating with our customers to let them know about changes, the rationale behind those changes, and how the changes benefit them.
  3. We’ve learned to not try to be everything to everyone. This means being very disciplined with the products we launch, and the types of customers we service. With our rapid growth came an excitement to please everyone, and our products and service level sometimes fell short, which is unacceptable. We now have a clear focus, and are diligent about deciding what to take on in-house, versus when to partner with best-in-class providers. We choose our integration and service partners carefully and ensure those partnerships offer a seamless customer experience, as each partner is an extension of the Zenefits brand.

We’ve learned a tremendous amount as we evolved from supporting our first customer in 2013, to more than 10,000 customers today. The learning process is continual, but we believe our “tough” lessons are behind us.

Q3: I've heard from OrgOrg'ers who absolutely love Zenefits and find it to be their dream solution that saves them time/money, but also from those who have been disappointed by unresponsive account reps, serious paperwork errors, and dropped balls when taking care of important employee benefit issues. How are you improving not just your technology and products, but your customer support and services?
As mentioned, Zenefits is essentially a new company today. We’ve made improvements across almost every aspect of our business with a focus on improving customer experience at every step.

Let’s start with the service side. Providing best-in-class service is one of our top priorities, and we have several initiatives in motion to get us there. An example is the creation of verticals within our support team to enable deep product specialization. Zenefits offers a broad suite of products and services --it’s virtually impossible for every support rep to know everything.

Another example is smarter support case triaging. We strive to help customers resolve issues as fast as possible, which means getting them to the right person ASAP. Our new online “contact us” process involves intelligent case routing and a call-back model. We’re able to have more effective and efficient dialogue with customers because --behind the scenes-- we capture who they are, and why they’re contacting us. And customers are responding positively to this change! I’m pleased to announce that today we have the highest Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) in Zenefits history with a 4.6 out of 5. (Our goal is to get to a 5, and we won’t stop improving until we get there!) In the coming months, we’ll launch even more channels through which customers can quickly and easily contact us.

On the product side, we recognize our customers have entrusted us to manage critical services and sensitive information (insurance, payroll, etc.) --and with that comes great responsibility to get everything right 100% of the time. We’ve gotten much more disciplined with our releases. This includes more rigorous testing and quality assurance. In addition to our internal processes, we’ve enlisted a company to test our products for hours every day, which enables us to proactively identify and address potential issues.

Q4: You’ve had some pretty big product releases lately. What are people most excited about?
Today, helping customers buy/manage health insurance is just part of what we do, but not the sole focus. Customers really love the interconnectedness of the product: from onboarding to benefits to payroll to third-party integrations – the data just flows! Zenefits is a powerful, all-in-one HR platform that helps employers manage the employee life-cycle, and build stronger benefits to attract and retain talent by making it easy to offer things like commuter benefits, FSA/HSA, and 401(k). Customers are excited about integrations with third-party technologies like Google, Slack, Expensify, Xero, Quickbooks, Greenhouse, and more. Employees love our new mobile app, which allows them to do things like request time off and access their insurance information remotely. We’ve also overhauled many core products --such as Time Off and Documents-- which are more intuitive and functional than ever.

Q5: Tell me about the Zenefits Customer Community. Why’d you decide to launch it, and how’s it going?
We were inspired by OrgOrg and the community you’ve built of tight-knit, collaborative, like-minded business professionals-- and we wanted to launch something similar for Zenefits customers. The Zenefits Customer Community (ZCC) launched in February, and has been a lifeline for many of our admins. It’s buzzing with questions and knowledge-sharing across everything from insurance contribution plans, to improving culture, to making remote employees feel more included.

Q6: In February, Jay Fulcher joined your company as CEO. What are you excited about with Jay?
Jay is a seasoned pro with a successful track record of running companies at scale. He is the right leader at the right time for Zenefits. He brings a wealth of experience, domain knowledge about the HR Tech market (from PeopleSoft), and a very disciplined approach to growth and customer success. Jay brought with him another HR industry veteran, Jeff Carr, who is Zenefits’ COO. Jeff was a leader at PeopleFluent, Saba, Taleo and PeopleSoft. At Zenefits, he’s leading our Sales, Service, and Support organizations. Together, they’re helping create a more operationally-efficient and customer-centric organization. I’m really grateful to work so closely with both Jay and Jeff.

Q7: If OrgOrg members have questions or feedback, how can they get in touch with you?
OrgOrg members can contact me directly at sarah.blanchard@zenefits.com. Any feedback is great feedback!  Also, in effort to improve our product and service, we’d like to invite Bay Area OrgOrg’ers who are internal HR Admins or external HR Consultants to participate in a luncheon focus group at our new SoMa office in San Francisco. Participants will enjoy lunch and have the opportunity to meet our team, influence our product, and network with one another! If you’re interested, please fill out this four-question form; we’ll follow-up with the date shortly.

Thanks for this opportunity, Kim!
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Bottlenecked on a Project? How to Make the Most of Time Spent Waiting for Approvals

5/16/2016

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Written by guest contributor and OrgOrg member Katharine Bierce

​​Ever been waiting for next steps on a project from a colleague or supervisor who is swamped with multiple projects?  

Here are some tips for managing your time in the midst of bottlenecks.
1.       Read the company website and social media feeds.
Especially if you’re a new hire, it helps to know what your company does - and how your company is positioned in the marketplace.  This is especially key if you’re in sales, marketing, business development or other customer-facing roles, but is also helpful for context even if you’re in back office operations or a technical role.

2.       Read the company intranet and get to know what’s going on and who’s who.
You never know what interesting things you can learn about how your company works – on the company wiki, SharePoint, Confluence or other portal for employees only.  You can find presentations from past conferences, catch up on HR processes, and find out more about what other projects are ongoing in different departments that might pique your interest. Maybe even send an email to a colleague who posts some interesting content and you can make a new friend or at least build your professional network!  Or better yet, invite someone to lunch.  It also can’t hurt to memorize the names, faces, and titles of the top 10-20% of the leaders at your company (e.g. Director/VP level and above), so that when they walk by in meetings, even if they’re not at your office regularly, you can say hello and then become known by senior stakeholders.  

3.       Read best practices blogs.
Stay on top of news in your industry vertical and/or department.  Set up a Google Alert for topics of interest and see what’s going on in the news.

4.       Come up with long-range strategy for your area and an action plan to achieve it.
If your supervisor is the one who is really busy and has been running from one meeting to another, he or she will really appreciate your taking the time to think about how to meet your company’s strategic goals.  This shows leadership potential, vision, and thoughtfulness.

5.       Come up with 30 day, 90 day, and 1 year goals for yourself and an action plan to achieve it.
Be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-Bound with your goals. For example, don’t say “I want to be a better public speaker,” think “I will research local Toastmasters groups today, join one, and give my first speech within the next 30 days.”  Some great goal setting and visioning resources are in this ebook here: www.hive.org/20s as well as this article on visioning (which you can do for yourself, not just for your company).

6.       Take a micro-break and stretch!
Experts recommend taking breaks at least every 30 minutes when you are doing a repetitive motion, such as typing.  No one likes carpal tunnel!  You can also combine productivity techniques like the Pomodoro method with a free app like StretchClock to stay healthy.
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Katharine Bierce has worked with startups and large companies in project management, marketing, recruiting, operations and more. She enjoys turning great ideas into reality. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, singing, hiking, planning and attending “tech for social good” Meetups and advising nonprofits.  Katharine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago with a degree in Psychology.

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How to write goals that actually work

4/13/2016

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Goal-setting is a regular and revered practice in my life. Whether it’s at the office or at home, I use goals to aim my intentions and get s*%t done. In order to brainstorm and set goals that set me up for success, I make sure my goals are SMART; that is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

I believe that setting SMART goals is a key part of seeing results, and I’m so passionate about the subject that I’ve led workshops both at my own company and to the OrgOrg community. Here’s some tips on how you can integrate the SMART acronym into your own goal-setting brainstorming sessions.

First, get yourself some blank (physical or digital) paper. In a quiet space, spend a minute or two focusing on your breath, gently setting thoughts aside if and when they do come to you. After a minute or two, or as you are called to do so, start writing down the things you’d like to accomplish. They can be big (“Solve world hunger”) or small (“Take out the trash”); full sentences (“Buy flowers at the market today”) or umbrella thoughts (“Health”). Spend 10 minutes doing this. (Here’s a timer you can use online!)

When your 10 minutes are up, take a look at what you’ve written. You may have written specific goals, like “decide which ottoman to buy” -- or you may have written general themes, like “home decor.” Both are great! You can suss out potential goals from your theme by asking yourself “How might I [theme]?” For example, if I wrote down “career advancement,” I’d ask myself “How might I advance my career?” and come up with a few goals from there: “Talk with a career coach.” “Take a class on negotiation.” “Learn more about potential career paths in my field.”

Once you’ve written out a number of first-draft goals, choose one to hone into a SMART goal. Spend 5 minutes reviewing your chosen goal against the following considerations:


Is it Specific?


  • Does the goal include the answer to the question “What does it take to achieve this goal?”

  • Would a third party be able to read your goal and understand exactly when it was achieved?


Here’s an example of making a goal more Specific:

  • Before: “I will run more.”

  • After: “I will run 3 times a week, for a total of 30 miles, by the end of the month.”


Is it Measurable?

Is it Actionable?

Is it Realistic?

Is it Time-Bound?


Want to learn how to make your goals Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-Bound, too? Join OrgOrg to gain access to our full database of resources and just-for-members events! 




Helen Laroche
OrgOrg Resources Team




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How to Become More Technical

3/8/2016

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Written by guest contributor and OrgOrg member Katharine Bierce
If you want to move from an administrative role to a technical role, such as project management or marketing, start by learning the basics of technology with some free online courses:
1.       Computer Science 101: how computers work, from software to hardware.  No technical background required – a good starting point.
http://online.stanford.edu/course/computer-science-101-self-paced

2.       Intro to Databases – i.e. what databases are and how to work with them. It’s important to know what SQL is before you can learn more about NoSQL and “Big Data” platforms like Hadoop. This is a bit more technical but you can take portions of the bigger class (there are mini-modules) and use Google/Wikipedia for whatever is confusing.
https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/2014/SelfPaced/about

3.       How the Internet works: a 12 minute starter TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_blum_what_is_the_internet_really?language=en

4.       Intro to Computer Networks: basically, how the Internet works, in a lot more detail.
https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Networking-SP/SelfPaced/about

5.       Human-Computer Interaction: A great intro to how user experience design works. Important for how you take technology and turn something like an algorithm or a bunch of working code into an interface that actual humans can use.
https://class.coursera.org/hci/lecture
 
Then find out what your company’s internal documentation is about the product. 
  • Go through the company’s internal wiki (may require a VPN depending on your company/location).
  • Find new hire training for sales people – since they have to explain the product to others.
  • Look at your company’s YouTube channel for customer interviews/case studies, product demos, and whatever the PR department puts out.
  • Watch videos from your company’s past conferences (if available).
 
Read up on the industry – ask colleagues or just search online for
  • What conferences do people attend? Even if you can’t go to the conference, you can often watch a livestream or download presentations after the fact.
 
Meet people. 
  •  www.meetup.com has excellent events in person by topic.  If you don’t have a lot of money and events aren’t free, contact the organizer and offer to help with setup or cleanup in exchange for a free ticket.  Often, event organizers are happy to have the help, and you can often attend for free!
 
Share what you know.
 
Take notes and write about what you learn.  
Start with word docs or google docs of interesting things you learn.  You can do this in a blog post on www.medium.com and publish your learnings once you feel like you’ve hit a milestone.  A good format to take is “how to do ___” or “10 things I learned about ___.”  For more ideas on topics/headlines, see here.
 
If you want to take it to the next level, organize an event and meet people in the topic/industry/area you want to learn more about.  You can start by finding an existing Meetup organizer and offer to produce an event for free for that community, for example.
 
The best way to learn is to teach, so if running an event sounds like a lot of work, start with explaining to a colleague, friend, or family member what you’ve learned.
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What tools or approaches have you used to become more technical?  Share with us in the comments.
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About the author:
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Katharine Bierce works in email marketing at a tech company in San Francisco.  She loves reading, writing, and understanding how things work from technology to business processes.  In her free time, she enjoys yoga, singing, hiking, planning and attending “tech for social good” Meetups and advising nonprofits.  Katharine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago with a degree in Psychology.


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bleep blorp: numbers are your friends

3/1/2016

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There's a lot of talk these days about DATA. Big data. Private data. Censored data. Leaked data. People being seen as numbers. Companies collecting all your data and using it to sell you things. It seems that in today's world, one simply cannot survive without workin' the numbers! 

First and foremost, I want to say that people are not numbers. Ok? Ok. Got that out of the way. I'd also like to let y'all know that I am historically  *not* a numbers person. I might even say that I actively avoid numbers as much as possible. I can manage a budget. I can balance a checkbook. But if someone else wants to mess around in Excel, I'll gladly hand over the task. But alas, like I said, today's modern world and all. A girl (or guy) cannot simply bury her (his) head in the sand and pretend like the numbers don't exist. Obvi.

In my day job, I run PeopleOps at Disqus - we have around 50 employees, and a data-driven CEO. He and I get along swimmingly, but it can sometimes be tough to translate my warm fuzzy people projects into metrics-driven business initiatives. And heck, keeping the lights for all these people is no easy feat. We need systems and checklists and yes, data, to help us make good decisions. "BUT KIM! HOW DO YOU USE THIS 'DATA'? GIVE ME SOME IDEAS!" You got it, buddy.

Here are a few examples of ways my team and I use data to do our jobs better:

  • Managing our office snacks program - When we first launched the program, we surveyed the team to see what they wanted.  We send semi-regular surveys to assess how folks feel about our offerings so we can make changes. Being able to say that 62% of employees asked for healthier snacks is a great way to back up your decisions to supply more carrots. 
  • Launching new PeopleOps projects - It's one thing to rely on your gut and your boss to figure out what projects to work on. It's another to ask measured questions and present the data. We run engagement surveys twice a year, and we use the lowest-scoring categories to figure out where to focus our efforts in upcoming quarters.
  • Improving our recruiting process - By using data like time-to-hire and candidate-dropout-rate (our ATS, Greenhouse, has excellent reporting built-in), along with anecdotal data from followup surveys, we were able to target specific parts of our interview process that could be tightened up. We improved the candidate experience by preparing interviewers more thoroughly and making the process move faster.
  • Cleaning up internal tools - We're looking at usage data for the different tools and systems we use internally, looking at what we're using and what it's costing us. Understanding that only a small percentage of our team was using IRC helped us make the case to move to Slack, which appealed to a wider percentage of employees.
  • Choosing Benefits & Perks - Leaning on our brokers, news articles, and the fine folks of OrgOrg, we've been able to pull industry data and review the benefits and perks we offer to stay competitive. We also survey employees periodically to see what's most important to them. That way, we're able to design plans that fit our company culture and position us well in the marketplace.

When I'm thinking about projects for my team, I look at past successes and known issues. When I want to make big changes, I back my suggestions up with data. 

Data helps you get a seat at that elusive table. It helps you feel more secure in your decisions (especially in a sort of nebulous or undefined role - I'm sure none of you know what I'm talking about!). It gives you something to measure against, so you know if your plans were successful. 

What are your favorite tools for collecting and measuring data? How have you found success letting the numbers be your friends?
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Care and Feeding of your Founder/Founding CEO

2/23/2016

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Written by guest contributor and OrgOrg member Katharine Bierce
If you work with a founder or founding CEO, you know that they are amazing people with a lot of talents.  They can also need support in certain areas complementary to their skill sets.  

Here’s a actionable overview of how to handle your founder to help your startup be as productive, happy, and successful as possible.


1.     Focus their energy on the task at hand.
Founding CEOs usually get to where they are because they are OK at doing everything and great at doing one thing.  You need to help the CEO change his or her behavior to become comfortable with delegating more so s/he can spend more time on the 1 thing s/he does best.
To do this, be a ‘bulldog’ and focus the CEO’s energy on the task at hand, make it time limited, and keep reminding him or her to not go off on tangents: ‘yes, that’s a great idea, but for the next 10 minutes, let’s focus on part B before we go to part C.’

2.     Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Because the founding CEO puts so much personal energy into their company, it’s like their baby, and they want it to be perfect.  To avoid the problem of the ‘perfect being the enemy of the good,’ you want something to be done when it’s at 80%.  If it’s only done at 100% then you’re spending too much time on it.  Having the authority to say when something is done in a particular area, and holding the CEO to a certain pre-defined number of revisions when s/he is consulted, can help with this.

3.     Visioning and ideation.
Sometimes founders don’t know what they think until they see what they say.  You may need to go on the journey with them, and even if all you’re doing is listening to them ramble, they will value you for providing even an occasional sentence that gets them to the next level of company strategy.  Steve Jobs was famous for taking long walks, so if you find yourself getting stuck at a computer with a blank document, try talking it out and recording the conversation.  You can then send that mp3 to a transcriptionist and then give that to a writer to clean up and turn into a one pager.

4.     Provide Food.
Founding CEOs often have a day full of back to back meetings, sometimes for 6 hours at a stretch.  If you bring them a sandwich they will be super appreciative.

5.     On taking care of people.
One thing that keeps startup founders up at night is being able to make payroll.  Don’t remind them how many people are depending on the company to feed their family, send the kids to high school, or care for aging parents.  It only adds to their stress.

6.     Mood swings require emotional jujitsu.
Don’t be fazed if a founder gets annoyed at people for no apparent reason.  Founding CEOs are a special breed of visionaries who think that their idea has a better chance than anyone else’s, even though most startups fail within 3 years and have a <5% success rate.  So emotionally speaking, they are wired differently.  Allow them this space to be cranky and, when possible, do some jujitsu by redirecting their energy in a positive direction.

For example, if your founder is annoyed at an offshore contractor who isn’t doing work that’s up to par, consider the cultural context.  Is the person acting OK within their cultural context (e.g. going as far as they can without asking for help, and trying to show progress rather than interim milestones to the supervisor?  If you expect someone in a hierarchical culture to treat a manager as a peer, that will feel awkward for them unless you have a training program on cultural sensitivity and how to work with Americans).

Try to turn the founder’s frustration at the person into a checklist of what the founder would count as good work.  Then draft that checklist as an email for how you can improve communications with the person the founder is mad at, and run it by your founder.   They may thank you for seeing their intentions behind the frustration!

7.     Notice what gets your founding CEO frustrated or energized.  For example, some founders may find that tasks are easy to plow through but making 3 decisions in a row on the same day is agonizing.  If this is the case, prioritize the decisions to be made so that your founder doesn’t feel overwhelmed and stuck.

8.     Set focus time on the calendar for top priority things – i.e. spend 1 hour in the same room where you and your founder only work on high priority items.  You might think this is babysitting but your founder will thank you for helping keep him or her focused rather than checking email all day.  This is particularly important in a company culture where people respect and respond to meeting invitations more than they respond to emails or requests for edits on long documents.

Got any other suggestions?  Share them in the comments!
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About the author:
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Katharine Bierce has worked with startup founders and executives at tech companies large and small in marketing, project management, recruiting, operations and more. She enjoys turning great ideas into reality and is currently getting technical with email marketing after being a generalist and "full stack marketer."  In her free time, she enjoys yoga, singing, hiking, planning and attending “tech for social good” Meetups and advising nonprofits.  Katharine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago with a degree in Psychology.

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