Archive for the 'Blog' Category



Celebrating the small wins

I saw a tweet the other day that the hardest thing for founders can be the half wins. The wins that maybe they hadn’t envisaged.

I call this – celebrating the small wins.

Small wins, the little milestones on the way to big wins. And in the journey towards that bigger goal – they should absolutely be celebrated. Always.

Here’s to the small wins. 🥃

 

 

June 23rd, 2018

To deliver the worlds best products, you have to have the world contributing

A riff on why remote work is essential.

I run a technology company headquartered here in New York with remote teams in India, UK, Sweden and AsiaPac.

We embraced remote working out of necessity but found it has become a real strength of our business. To deliver the worlds best products, you have to have the world contributing.

Here’s what we found:

1) Turn time zones in to an advantage

  • Time zones turn a 5 day week in to a 6 day effective work week. Days can have a 16 hour coverage. Presuming everyone is well briefed and communicated.
  • Public holidays in one country enhance this effect.
  • Compound this 52 weeks/year and it gives you a significant edge over your competitors. And with the same employee investment.

Every Friday, we’re briefing changes/responses in, to deliver Monday morning – putting us ahead, just as everyone is getting started. It’s not about the epic wins, it’s about the always on small wins. This helps us win, by design.

2) Enabled us to be more precise in hiring

  • Opening to remote work means you can be a lot more precise in your role hiring, as you are more likely to find that person with a particular set of requirements.
  • ^ Then your chance of hiring them is a lot higher too.

Remote working allows you to find people wherever they are.

3) Made our internal processes more robust

  • It enforces process at a younger age and/or smaller size.
  • These processes also encourage effective documentation and communication, both of which create better work.
  • If we were all in one place we wouldn’t have had to do this as fast.

People always say to me, oh I thought you were much bigger, it’s because of the discipline, time zone advantage and ability to hire precisely.

I know a lot of my readers, are pioneers in their own ways. It’s important to fly the flag for the future of work mobility, and to help provide enough reasons to help those companies who haven’t made the leap yet. What have you found? Please @bwagy me on Twitter.

Please do share…

If you’d like to find more about us, and/or jobs at Nudge visit https://www.giveitanudge.com

June 16th, 2018

Micro breaks

When things are busy – it’s easy to say no to a big break.

It’s near impossible to say no to a micro break.

It could be as simple as, Wednesday morning off.

An hour out of the office.

A long weekend, which a half day either side.

Taking a Tuesday off, to break up your week.

 

June 13th, 2018

How Facebook should tackle News

Facebook killed off trending news – and now is looking to support live broadcasting.

My sense is they’re going down the rabbit hole again.

The problem with their initiatives is that they aren’t playing on the strength of the platform, to help inform and create a better experience.

What is it about Facebook that could improve the news experience? 

Thats the product question they need to answer.

My take is that they need to look to Twitter as a reference. They organise news topics and highlight the top tweets in their explore tab. It’s not rocket science but it does exactly what I want as a user, the Twitter take on a story.

This is a good model for taking the best of Twitter to be additive to the news experience.

 

How Facebook could tackle this

When a News event happens, trigger it as an event and let people contribute. Make them the hero’s. Lift them up – and elevate them.

What people share on Facebook is more direct, more personal. Twitter is more of our public face. So embrace that.

Then for bonus points, personalize that view for each and every user:

  • Share opposing points of view.
  • Share voices I don’t often hear
  • Elevate the official references of facts

Finally, embrace the small, sometimes for a news story, there is only 2-3 unique points of view worth sharing. That is ok. If you’ve delivered a great experience, the job is done.

 

Enable journalists

To enable journalists to use this and inform their reporting:

  • Provide tools to reach out (or a process) and to get consent for reuse of media.
  • The same for interviews.
  • And/or to ask questions of the audience.
  • ^ This helps the news industry produce better news.

And this is a lot better than just writing cheques for media companies to do what they already do.

 

June 7th, 2018

Token issues for turning up, i.e. a bitcoin for everyone

A coin for each day at work

Coin could be swapped for a share of profits.

A coin for being a citizen, basic income.

A coin for taking the train.

I’m really curious around a coin just being issued, for doing something. Something that we were all entitled too.

 

 

June 6th, 2018

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