Archives / December, 2013

5 Ways to Get Your Staff on the Same Page

5 Ways to Get Your Staff on the Same Page [This post first appeared as an article in Entrepreneur Magazine as part of a new series I’m publishing there in conjunction with my book, Startup CEO:  A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business] When a major issue arises, is everybody at your company serving the same interests? Or is one person serving the engineering team, another person serving the sales team, one board member serving the VC fund, another serving the early-stage “angels” and another serving the CEO? If that’s the case, then your team is misaligned. No individual department’s interests are as important as the company’s. To align everyone behind your company’s interests, you must first define and…

Onboarding vs. Waterboarding

Onboarding vs. Waterboarding One of our new senior hires just said to me the other day that he has been enjoying his Onboarding process during his first 90 days at Return Path and that at other companies he’s worked at in the past, the first few months were more like Waterboarding. At Return Path, we place a lot of emphasis on onboarding – the way we ask employees to spend their first 90 days on the job.  I’ve often said that the hiring process doesn’t end on the employee’s first day.  I think about the employee’s first day as the mid-point of the hiring process. The things that come after the first day — orientation (where’s the bathroom?), context-setting (here’s…