Who doesn’t know them? Department meetings, townhalls or all-hands are meetings that take place at longer intervals (e.g. quarterly) to give an update to an entire department or even a company. In Nugget #1 the people of buffer.com give a summary of what they have learned. My company also has remote department meetings, as we have several locations worldwide. This works quite well thanks to the video of the speakers and professional audio setup. But still, some remote participants lose attention at some point. The Physical Activity Break loosens up the meeting and is also healthy. The breakout sessions ensure more involvement of the participants and promote an exchange.
And the group photo is also a great idea. However, this requires a suitable videoconferencing tool and a team size that is still within reasonable limits.
How We Structure All Hands as a Fully Remote Team (6 min, text, English)
Nugget #2 is about “Lean Startup”. Valentino Pola has written a nice article on this approach on the innovation blog of the DZ Bank Group. He also makes it clear that hypotheses about a product or service can be tested without making a major investment in a first product. A simple purchase offer on a website is enough to get an initial data point on market response. Then you can iteratively release a first product with an MVP. This ensures an initial revenue stream, which can then be used to finance the next increments. But most importantly, I like his appeal “Get out of the house”. Only there one learns what the customer really wants.
If you are from the financial sector, it is worth subscribing to the blog. Once a week an extensive link collection on FinTech, Blockchain and digitization is published. But also for all other industries a look is worthwhile, because they share some interesting stuff on innovation.
“Lean Startup”: Out to the customer. Fast (6 min, text, German)
With Nugget #3 comes the next impulse on #NewPay. When it comes to salary, the question of fairness usually arises quite quickly. I stumbled across the following TED Talk by Frans de Waal. He studies human behavior on animals. How do elephants cooperate? Can monkeys show empathy? At the end of the talk, Frans de Waal shows an experiment in which one monkey is rewarded with a cucumber and another with a grape. It doesn’t take long for a monkey to get angry and refuse the cucumber. In another experiment, the monkey with the grape refused the reward at some point. What can we learn about #NewPay? Many would probably refuse a salary increase if they see that others are paid less. However, this requires transparency. But I also think that you do not necessarily have to pay the same. If I don’t like grapes, I prefer the cucumber. In other words, maybe I don’t need more money at all, but would like more free time or further training. What do you think?
PS: I also had to yawn during the talk;) (17 min, video, English)
I hope you had a successful working week and already enjoy your leisure time. Have a nice weekend!