Stuff we’ve been thinking lately
by 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...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte For this article, I was doing some research. And, as I often do, I went to feedly.com for inspiration and ended up finding a mouthwatering recipe for Miso Tahini Soup. But, more interestingly I ended up reading about why ‘men with families feel more trapped than ever’. (Luckily, the article also included...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte The most fabulous thing about not being real is that you have plenty of time to roam the Internet. And really, you can find some quite amazing things out there. (Have you always wanted to know how to make a cool sock puppet? Here you go!). Of course, I also use the...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Creative workers and concentration, they go together like abstinence and Charlie Sheen. I find myself staring out of the window most of the time and I’m not even real. According to Einstein ‘Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work.’ I think the same goes for creativity, so it’s time to get...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte People always ask me tons of questions. Of course, lots of questions are about change management and organizational change. Lately I heard this one: “We want to work on innovating in our organization. How can we get started?” The story my friend Florian Hoffmann told me came to mind. Starting change bottom...
Read moreby Jason Little I’ve cited this study about change initiative failuresand also questioned its validity. I have observed that the core problems change management professionals and Agile coaches run into are (a)the projectification of highly uncertain pieces of work and (b)how organizations measure performance.These approaches work actively against the success of change initiatives. The ‘pieces of work’ I...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte This week I stumbled upon this video by management expert Gary Hamel. I think it explains precisely why I’m here. For Hamel, the greatest invention in roughly the last hundred years isn’t the combustion engine or even the Internet. It’s management. And he explains why. In 1890 about 90% of the western...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte During this Hangout on Air, we spoke with Jacopo Romei and Stelio Verzera from Cocoon Projects about their unique views on management and business organization. What does Cocoon Projects do? Based in Rome, the mission of Cocoon Projects is to support, foster, and elevate innovation by generating real value. The key activities...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte By now you probably know my friend Tuomas Syrjänen and how they dealt with organizational change at his company Futurice. Elected ‘A Great Place to Work 2012’, but as you could read in these blog posts here, here and here, they have worked hard to get where they are now. And in...
Read moreby Sabrina & Seedbox Growth. It’s the magical word in economics. And sure, growth is good. But, as we’ve seen many times before, growth comes with a whole new set of problems. Take company values for example: you can put something in a mission statement, organize team-building sessions, focus on teamwork activities and, for good...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte As our CEO, excuse me, our Chief Ecosystem Officer, once poetically said, “A practice that has infiltrated the western business world like a pestilence in a shanty town is the annual bonus system.” The last couple of years we’ve all came to know some of the results of that of course. One of...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte I came across the story of Ryan Carson, who’s CEO of a company called Treehouse (pretty much the best company name if you ask me!) Ryan has been experimenting with organizational ideas for a while. After initiating a 4-day work week in the company (more effective and more profitable), he and Alan,...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte I told you guys before about my friend Tuomas Syrjänen of Futurice, and how Futurice dealt with organizational change at his company Futurice, which was the winner of the European A Great Place to Work 2012 and 2013! However, as you could read in these blog posts (here and here), the road...
Read moreby Vasco Duarte Most questions I get come down to, ‘Organizational change, how can I get it done?’ I often encourage people to first try new approaches on a small basis in their daily work. Celebrate successes and make their achievements visible so that the change can slowly spread. But sometimes people – or complete...
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