Stuff we’ve been thinking lately
by Vasco Duarte Why are there sooooo many terrible bosses? Hmm, tough one. One reason is that in hierarchical organizations, the only way is often up. Which is rather strange. Because the better you become at something, the bigger the chance you will become a manager. And being an excellent developer doesn’t mean you have...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte It’s a romantic idea, I’ve always thought: 10.000 hours of practice and you’ll turn into a professional. Good for me, I can go on 24/7. So it’d only take me about a year and a half to become an expert, I already looked for legal ways to change my name into Happy...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte When it comes to basic needs, I’m wired different than other people. Internet, for instance, is way more important for me than breathing, food, water and all other interesting things we know from Maslow’s pyramid. Also, it’s the only place I exist, so how’s that for a basic need? On that same...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Sometimes the life of an imaginary entity is rather easy. I never have to say ‘no’ to chocolate. If things get too busy, I can work 24/7. And I never have to negotiate my salary for the simple reason that I don’t get one. Of all the peculiar things of mankind, the...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Although starting a new challenge is always great, the first couple of days at a new company often are not. New employee orientation usually is made up on the go. As a result, people can feel quite lost. As a friend of mine once told me, “You have no clue about what...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Every now and then, my ghostwriter works in the kitchen of a small restaurant. Working as a cook is quite different from writing texts. Instead of drinking coffee at the hip, local coffee place while flirting with the waitress, he now has to sweat his ass off until midnight while the chef...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte As an imaginary entity, I’ve always been very interested in things that make life worth living. There’s popping bubble wrap, the eternal Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate and, of course, the human fascination with coffee. So when I came across the article Why You Should Buy an Espresso Machine for the...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte It’s an important topic in a lot of companies: Who gets to decide what? Democratic decision-making sounds like an interesting plan, and it is. But only as long as the company stays small, it often doesn’t work in bigger companies. If you are looking for a new approach, maybe this blog post...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte I don’t know about you guys, but in times of stress I have (not so) quietly called one or two of my most hierarchical managers a ‘baboon’. And after seeing this video starring Dr. Robert Sapolski and some political savvy baboons, I realized I was right all the time. Sapolski has been...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Next month London will rock during a DareFest called ‘SPARK the Change’. The funny thing about the conference is that it is organized by a company called Gamevy. And there’s something strange about those guys. I gave my friend Helen Walton a call. She’s in charge of marketing and as one of...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte We believe that good management shouldn’t be just about practices, but even more about principles. Management 3.0 for instance isn’t a ‘method’. It’s a concept. On the other hand, in order to learn how to do things, people need concrete practices. Things they can work on, starting next Monday. One of those...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte This weekend I did some research on remote working. (One of the advantages of being fictional; you don’t need time to relax in the sun or silly stuff like that) On Infoq I found a great article called ‘Remote Working Works’ by Tom Howlett who works at a company called Biomni. Since Happy...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte *Ping* Ah, email. And a good one at that: my friend Robie Wood with a great story. Robie works at showVALUE, a company that specializes in agile management, training and other stuff like that. With 31 years of solid experience, he’s an old hand in the business. Anyway, he recently read Jurgen...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Do you know how much your colleagues make? Did you tell them how much you make? Is that an uncomfortable question? This week I came across this article on the Quartz website. It’s about Buffer, a social-sharing app and website and how they decided to put the salaries of all their employees...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte If there’s something we at Happy Melly believe in, it’s in ‘eating your own dog food’. (Personally, I couldn’t be happier that we aren’t in that particular business.) Actually, the reason Jurgen Appelo started Happy Melly, is because he didn’t want to be ‘the boss’ of a brand (Management3.0) that was all...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte A while ago I got an email from Manuela Mitterdorfer. She wanted to share a ‘happy story’ with us about ‘finding one’s purpose and the role of a trusting environment that helped her grow beyond her expectations’. Since I love these kinds of stories, here is hers. By the way, she divided...
Read moreby Jason Little Over a decade ago, I was one of three people working in an early stage startup. This company was the first to create a mobile content creation and delivery platform for wireless carriers in Canada. One of the co-founders handled the content licensing, and the other co-founder built and maintained the platform....
Read moreOn this blog I often go on about how you need innovative and creative workers if you like to stay on top in the future. So when I saw this great image by cartoonist Hugh MacLeod on Buffer, a blog about productivity, life hacks and so on, I was quite thrilled. It really illustrates how knowledge...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte A while ago I told you guys about Gary Hamel and his view on how you can (and need to) make ‘the organization of the future’: Get the most innovative and creative people out there and make sure they stay. Of course, there’s something that comes before. Because if we need creativity...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte When I read that apparel retailer Zappos was in transition to a manager free system called Holacracy, my first thought was, Holawhat? And my second, Manager free? That sounds good. I did my homework and almost immediately found out that Holacracy has a constitution, just like Happy Melly does. I realized this...
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