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Showing posts from February 17, 2019

Passion First?

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I recall being very surprised when working at Disney, and the criteria they recommended we use for hiring decisions. Disney had very specific recommendations, the strangest of which was that passion/enthusiasm for the brand (commonly called being 'pixie dusted' at Disney) was the MOST important qualification for applicants. In Agile, I have seen highly skilled teams with amazingly smart subject matter experts struggle while seeing teams who are highly motivated - enthusiastic neo-Agilists with much less subject matter expertise - quickly surpass the teams of subject matter experts and leave them far behind in a very short time. https://www.fastcompany.com/1837853/8-rules-creating-passionate-work-culture Fast Company magazine's "8 Rules for Creating Passionate Work Culture" includes the quote:  "Hire for passion first, experience second and credentials third". Quite different from the standard HR protocol, but who would you rather w

Why Do We Lie?

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Harvard Business Review conducted a 15-year longitudinal study and concluded: 54% of the companies they observed suffered a material drop in trust At a cost of at LEAST $180 billion and  At least 2% index score drop . What are the four main causes of lack of trust that creates a 'lying organization'? Weak cross-functional collaboration:    Silos cause almost a 6x increase in withholding or distorting of information. No effective process to gather decision makers into honest conversations about tough issues .  Organizations have to rely on rumors and gossip.  Interestingly, those types of companies found 71% of meetings to be unproductive Unjust Accountability Systems:    Organizations are 377% more likely to withhold or distort info if employee contribution measurement is seen as unfair. Lack of Strategic Clarity:   Employees are 283% more likely to withhold or distort the truth when there isn't clear alignment about what companies vision says they wil