High Performance Happy Thoughts from Cliff Oxford HR Happy says we should do what pleases people, High Performance Happy says I will fight for every inch. Think of an olympic athlete jumping into the pool for those 4:30 am laps. The latter includes the understanding that we are on a mission bigger that any one of us. We find our happiness in being on a world class team that is making a difference. High Performance Happy means giving employees tremendous responsibility, …

Building your culture and your team with Andy Dunn From Andy Dunn, Founder and CEO Bonobos No one gave me a recipe for how to create company culture. I have been lucky to piece together the wisdom of many who have gone before me. I save the accumulated genius of what I have learned from them, in distilled form, for the end. Is culture revealed or created? Most of the time when you need something at a company, you make …

Strengthening the Emotional Bond Between Your People and Your Company Culture No one engages with something that they are simply told or lectured. People engage when they are actually asked to voice an opinion and be part of a conversation. Inviting people to participate is not the same as asking them to decide—it’s understood that the leadership team has to make sense of the discussion and come to a final decision. But your people’s participation creates emotional engagement. If it’s …

Google Goes Open Source With Culture Just one more awesome step towards “making the world’s information universally accessible”. This month, Google launched its platform for the open sharing of ideas around culture and people-management. re:Work – the site’s moniker – is built on research-backed examples of how Google handles hiring, culture and anti-bias training, and shares free tools like internally-used slide decks and checklists. The site will also feature case studies of other great companies, a blog about new management trends, academic …

Heroes, Story + Ritual These deeply embedded pieces of our societal cloth are fundamentally human and trump PowerPoint values decks every time. Cultures are built on stories and heroes. We use them to orient ourselves. The stories we tell — and our heroes and rituals — reflect the soul of an organization. This is where your company values are embedded. STORIESFolklore is the fertile soil of inspiration. What stories do you tell new team members at onboarding? What stories are …

The art & science of creating strategy and unleashing change A crash course from Keith Yamashita Outlaw PowerPoint. Write down your vision as a story — with a beginning, middle, and end — to clarify what must change first. Don’t rely on words alone. Bring your thinking to life: Create an exhibit, use diagrams, prototype ideas. Make strategy an everyday act. The creation and re-creation of strategy shouldn’t be a process that you undertake only when budgets are due. Argue …

5 standout examples of Netflix’s fantastic culture 1. Adequate Performance Gets a Generous Severance Package. Nothing kills a company quicker than mediocre co-workers, and this is especially true at a start-up where there is tremendous pressure to hire key personnel. Think about a 20-person start-up with one bad employee. That translates to 5% of your workforce being ineffective, so that one person can really wreak havoc. Hiring mistakes will happen, and you need to take quick action. That being said, …