teamwork Archives - The Grassy Road

5 Ways Trust Impacts Your Productivity In The Office

Published in Inc January 8, 2015 So you want to create something fabulous and new. You want to innovate and create a breakthrough no one has thought of before. Well, you probably have a list of ingredients you need: a few computers, some smart people, project funding... but there is one critical ingredient you need which can't be measured but will have a huge impact on your success. That ingredient is Trust. Trust allows your team to move fast, fail fast and create. It's a simple but true fact so [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:24-08:00January 12, 2015|Career Advice|0 Comments

Sales is a Team Sport

Sometimes sales culture glorifies the lone sales rep: the road warrior who goes out and hunts, slays the order and throws it, still bleeding, on your desk, seeking your praise like a big game hunter standing over his kill's rapidly cooling dead body. Is this how your best guys—your top performers—sell? Or do they view sales as a sport that's won as a team? Now, I'm the girl who hates sports on TV, who reads a book during Super Bowl parties (except during the ads of course) and has never [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:27-08:00October 31, 2013|Leadership|0 Comments

How to Unite your Team: Advice from Napoleon

Silicon Valley is littered with small (and large) companies that want to create a revolution. It might be a revolution in commerce - like Square trying to "Architect a revolution, thoughtfully", or being the enablers of a revolution like social media was for the Arab Spring, or creating a revolution in music delivery the way Apple did with the iPod. But what is it that unites a team of people to try to create a revolution in the world of technology? Napoleon believed that "There are only two forces that [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:51:12-08:00December 31, 2012|Leadership|0 Comments

Why hiring smart is not enough

Warren Buffet once said “In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first one, the other two will kill you.”Clearly integrity is the first requirement when hiring. But right behind it, and just as critical, is intelligence, but intelligence comes with it's own baggage. Obviously intelligence is essential when hiring into a fast growing company. Intelligence enables quick problem solving and brilliant, innovative ideas. Intelligence allows people to work autonomously when they need to cut through to the [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:51:33-08:00December 18, 2012|Career Advice|0 Comments

How judgement and blame are ineffective

Why do we tolerate judging and blame when we all know they are such toxic behaviors? I recently came across a great model for thinking about how blame and judgement impact team behavior. The first chapter in Kevin Kennedy's new book "Devil in the Details" uses a four quadrant model to explain this as follows: The horizontal axis is the spectrum driven by thought - how we think. On the right the positive aspects: thought driven by insight and learning; on the left the negative aspects: thought driven by blame [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:55:00-08:00August 23, 2012|Career Advice|0 Comments

Will must be stronger than Skill

With all the coverage of the get-rich-quick startups of Silicon Valley at the moment it's important to remember that most of the time building a company is a marathon, not a sprint. Yes you need a good idea. Yes you need a strong, growing market. Yes you need smart people. But even with all of that, s**t happens, you get surprised, some things take longer than you expect, markets change and it can be a long, hard slog up the hill to build long term value. Especially in a time [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:56:14-08:00July 23, 2012|Leadership|0 Comments

Progressive states of long offsite meetings

Long meetings can progressively sap energy and create altered states of being. Yes they can.We went offsite as a management team for 2 days this weekend to talk through our strategy and 2012 planning. 11 of us in 2 houses at Pajaro Dunes, lots of flip charts, heated discussions, cooking together, walking on the beach and generally spending time together thinking about our business. It was really fun but, even so, it was intense and, combined with long discussions late into the night about the state of the world accompanied [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:01:55-08:00January 12, 2012|My Personal Journey|0 Comments

Teamwork is about alignment of interests

Teamwork comes in all shapes and sizes... and species. It's about knowing that your goals are aligned and you have to cooperate to reach your goals.For example, if you don't share the plate nicely you don't get to share in the plate cleaning. And even if you are a cat, if you've been raised with dogs since you were a kitten you quickly figure out how to think like a dog, and act like a dog so you get the same treats as a dog.

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:03:20-08:00October 20, 2011|Career Advice|0 Comments