Category

Quick Studies

118

Start with a Skateboard: How Spotify Builds Products

If you set out to make the most robust thing you can imagine, it will take you a long time before you create value for your customer or gain any learnings for yourself. Instead, focus your team on something you can make quickly that will provide an opportunity to gain real feedback. At the start of every new project, ask your team: “What’s our skateboard?”

At Lever, A Simple GIF Makes New Employees Feel Welcome

Reinvigorating a mundane process, especially onboarding, can kickstart a new hire’s success at a company. Look for simple and inexpensive ways that your team can personalize the experience and make new team members feel welcome.

How IKEA Defines the Role of its Internal Incubator

The objective of a company’s incubator (skunkworks, lab, etc.) is to discover new opportunities, but it’s up to the rest of the organization to operationalize and commercialize those ventures. Moreover, the test-and-learn mindset and process that the lab develops is usually it’s most valuable asset and should be spread to the full enterprise.

Three Rules that Supercell Uses to Ensure Aligned and Autonomous Teams

Once you’ve put together a capable team, give them clear goals and the ability to make their own decisions.

How ustwo Created a Culture of Continuous Learning

Feedback is not a tool for criticism or correction. And it’s not an excuse to run around telling people to change because we think they should. It is a tool to help us all see ourselves more clearly, which in turn helps us all learn and grow together.

Why Asana’s No Meeting Wednesdays Increase Productivity

Designating time for production is critical. Setting aside time specifically to work can make your team more effective and boost morale.

How Capital One Convinced Teams to Use Design Thinking

If a complex financial institution can transform itself with a willingness to actually listen, there’s hope for other industries as well. The lessons Capital One has learned are to encourage teams to talk directly to customers and to adopt a bias towards action and experimentation.

How Chrysler’s Problems Board Resolved Chronic Workplace Issues

Rather than brushing off chronic but seemingly minor problems, tracking them can empower employees to resolve issues and add up to an improved workplace.

How Percolate’s Onboarding Process Prepares New Employees

Welcoming new employees with a consistent on-boarding process is a great way to spread your company’s culture from the very beginning, and can help bring people up to speed faster, which will ultimately make them more productive.

How Facebook Recreates the Customer Experience

Not only should you put your customer needs front and center, you should attempt to recreate the customer experience for your teams. Help them simulate experiences outside of their immediate view and encourage teams to design solutions for your most constrained customers in order to develop strategies for further growth.

How Apple Uses Random Words to Brainstorm

Using random words as inspiration can help you draw new parallels and find surprising insights.

How Twilio Scaled Its Values With Its Operations

Values are more than words, they’re a guide for daily behavior. Moreover, they are living, breathing descriptors of the business and its people. Develop a recurring habit of reflecting and revising your values so they never become out of date.

Ernst & Young Looks Beyond Universities and GPAs in Hiring

If your organization uses college performance as part of its recruiting process, it may be worth rethinking how your organization hires and evaluates job candidates—otherwise, you might be missing out on top talent.

Appoint a “Tenth Man” or Devil’s Advocate to Make Better Decisions

Too often in meetings, emphasis is placed on coming to a decision that causes the least amount of friction amongst the team. However, when the focus is only on group consensus, teams lose sight of the problem they originally set out to solve.

How B. Good Retains Its Best Employees

Although these benefits may not be “disruptive” or revolutionary, they are small gestures that add up to satisfied employees who stick around longer. Look for simple ways that you can show your employees that you value their contributions.

How Spotify Scales Post-Mortem Meetings in a Large Organization

Don’t let the size of a team stop you from engaging the full group in developing and sharing learnings from the work. Break up your team into smaller teams, each focused on a specific topic, to conduct your Agile Retrospectives.

How Upstart Tailored Performance Reviews for their C-Suite

Providing feedback is essential to any employee’s growth, but make sure that you are measuring the right qualities when evaluating your leadership team.

FreshBooks Uses Blind Dates to Encourage Collaboration Across Teams

While rapidly scaling your internal team, prevent silos from developing by encouraging mingling between different departments and provide ongoing opportunities to collaborate.

Basecamp Publicizes Employee Benefits to Recruit Talent

Employee benefits do more than keep your current people happy, they also motivate others to join you. Moreover, what a company offers in benefits says volumes about their values and practices.

Adore Me Gives Employees a Bonus Check When They Resign

Treating your team well while they’re employed is still the best way to improve recruitment and retention rates, but unconventional employee perks like a resigning bonus can be a factor of your company culture that helps set you apart.