[Update 10 March, 1030 AEDT: I’ve written a follow-up article which, while bound to piss off a few people, explains precisely why I’m so concerned about this issue. There’s also my first follow-up, written on the weekend.]
“Chalk and cheese” is how I’d describe two approaches to staff management I stumbled across this week. One treats staff as trusted contributors to a shared enterprise, the other as disposable work-droids from which you squeeze every last effort.
Jason Calacanis (pictured) has started various firms, including Mahalo, a “human-powered search engine”. (Don’t worry, I’d never heard of it either.) In How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips) there are some good tips — like outsourcing accounting and worrying more about good chairs than tables. But to paraphrase the bad ones:
- Hold meetings at lunchtime so people never get a mental break from work.
- Don’t provide phones so staff have to use their own.
- If someone shows signs of working hard, buy them a computer for home so they end up working nights and weekends too.
- Buy a good coffee machine — not because you’d like to give your employees good coffee, but to prevent them “wasting time” getting it from a nearby barista.
But that’s not the worst…
Continue reading “How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?”
My notebook is full of references to the human mind.