It’s no secret that I am fascinated by the different approaches that so many tech companies take towards organizational culture compared to more traditional companies.
Here’s another example – a presentation outlining tech marketing company, HubSpot’s cultural code. (I especially love their three-word policy that guides pretty much everything they do: “Use Good Judgement”. Also like that any book an employee requests is automatically added to their Kindle account – that’s a perk that libraries sorta kinda offer to their employees already!)
Does your workplace have a similar document that summarizes its shared beliefs, values and practices? If so, what does it say? If not, why not?
Lots of April Fool’s jokes across the Internet today as usual.
One of the funniest is that /r/radiohead has temporarily changed their sub-reddit to be like /r/coldplay, playing up the “rivalry” between fans of these two well-known UK bands with Radiohead seen as groundbreaking and original while Coldplay is seen by many as mainstream, unoriginal (copying much from Radiohead) and pandering.
Some of the (sarcastic) posts from the Radiohead sub-Reddit today…
Google Cafes to encourage employee interaction, allowing anyone to directly e-mail senior managers
Google Moderator which is custom software that allows staff to ask questions about any aspect of the company and then vote on other people’s ideas to ensure the most relevant ideas get attention
TGIF weekly open meetings with senior management
GUTS (Google Universal Ticketing System) where people can report issues or problems and which, more importantly, is also monitored for patterns
FixIts which are 24-hour sprints where all staff focus on solving a single problem
internal innovation reviews where middle managers take ideas from their units to senior managers for consideration
…and a wide range of surveys on all manner of topics from company operations to the performance of managers including a major one called GoogleGeist which is a solicits feedback on hundreds of topics and then strikes volunteer teams to work on solutions.
Finding the A&W at the Cornwall Centre food court closed for renovations tonight, a co-worker suggested that we should “nationalize the fast food industry.”
I helped a visually impaired patron mix up a protein shake the other day. Now *that’s* customer service! 😉
It’s a race as to which will come first – warm spring weather or us needing to buy a winter coat to replace the one Shea’s quickly outgrowing (Note: not actually Shea in this clip)
The Flames are about to trade Jarome Iginla. I’m betting Los Angeles but would’ve loved to see him in Pittsburgh (more likely before they picked up Morrow.)
I am addicted to Diet Pepsi Lime pop. (I may have more to say about aspartame in a different post someday.)
This is my new favourite sub-Reddit. So frickin’ cool!
No words for me to quote in the title of this week’s post like I usually do. But the epic choral and instrumental music is a perfect soundtrack for this awesome video as Shea and I are down to around a month or so until our baby comes!
This is unique for a couple reasons – wrestling is not known for being politically correct at the best of times and the bad guys have traditionally been the foreigners – Russians, Sudanese and yes, even Canadians! (Well, except all three people I linked to *are* Canadians by birth – but that’s just another element of how the sport is scripted.)
Although wrestling has played with the line between fantasy and reality forever with both its characters and storylines, the other unique thing about this angle is that the two bad guys completely broke character during a promo to explain exactly what they were doing – to say that they weren’t actually racists but played these characters to maximize crowd reaction.
Glenn Beck is among the conservative radio hosts attacking the WWE for this angle and there is also speculation that the WWE is trying to point out that Beck is just like their wrestlers – an entertainer who doesn’t even believe what he’s saying but who is playing a character with the goal of maximizing crowd reactions – with the only difference being that WWE fans are in on the joke while fans of Glenn Beck (and Limbaugh and others like that) aren’t.
The irony is that, in wrestling, you often have to assume everything is an angle and this whole storyline just makes me think we’ll probably see Glenn Beck show up at Wrestlemania next month! 😉
