Whenever possible, hire people who are better than you. Hire those who are the best you have ever seen within the domain of services or products that your team is responsible for. You want quality over quantity and you’ll want it every single time. Additionally, you don’t want the rest of your team to be doing someone else’s job in …
Experience trumps education
As someone who has attended his fair share of academic programs and has definitely found value in each of them I have to say that education is important and should never truly end. It is a process, not a finite event and can come in many forms and shapes. However, first-hand experience with particular products, services or technologies beats anything …
Made a mistake? Own it, apologize and fix it
All leaders and all organizations make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. However, what differentiates them is how they react after the mistake has been made. If a mistake (whatever it may be, a security breach, performance or stability issues…) is made by you or your organization as a whole, own it, apologize, fix it and learn from that …
All teams need business sensibility and awareness
Whatever your functional area of expertise is you need to be aware and involved in supporting what your organization is all about. Simply performing your operational functions in isolation is no longer enough to be a valuable contributor. Additionally, by staying away from the organizational core function you are limiting yourself in access, contributions and ultimately career advancement.
Build relationships and partnerships with vendors
Build relationships and partnerships with vendors providing services for your organization. No matter how large they may be they should never have an upper hand on your organization; you should work together towards a mutually beneficial relationship so don’t allow to be in a subservient position. Start your selection process by focusing on the needs of your organization, then research …
Focus on core competencies, outsource the rest
Perform a complete review of your operations and realign appropriately to ensure competitiveness, value and success. All business are doing things they shouldn’t and are not doing those which would bring them much needed value and quality. Focus your talent, people and effort into products and services you are good at, want to be better at and want to be …
Periodically reassess performance and customer service
It is extremely valuable to have a pulse on what is happening with your clients, your partners, your suppliers so that you can readjust and act accordingly. Knowing what they think and have experienced with you and your staff is of great value in moving forward and establishing trust in those relationships. This is why a periodic reassessment of both …
Gmail Manager for Firefox works again
If you are like me and heavily use several Firefox add-ons, chances are that Gmail Manager is one of them. It is a great add-on to manage multiple Gmail accounts (as the name implies). However, with the latest Firefox update (v. 6.0.2) it broke and wouldn’t login. No worries, after a bit of searching I came across a solution that …
Facebook updates its news feed and makes it real-time
Facebook updated their news feed, made it real-time and moved it to the right (right above chat). This could be a nice change considering the growth of both screen resolutions and monitor sizes and as well all know instant gratification is highly rated nowadays, so the real-time component will be much appreciated. Now, if I could only opt-out of being …
1and1.com’s tech support rocks!
For the second time 1and1.com ‘s technical support has proven amazing. They have been hosting several of my websites for years now and while I’ve been lucky enough not to have any technical issues, last night around midnight EST I had to contact them for assistance. Last night, I called about an issue with php version while modifying a plugin …