Employees And Teams Archives

Conflicted with Business Processes

Published in Business on November 15, 2015

The idea of implementing a process is one that should provide insight and guidance. Yet, I find myself conflicted when I think about the idea of putting them together. Not because they lack value, but because I know that their intentions will be lost over time, and they’ll inevitably be leveraged as a crutch and seen as an absolute.

This bring about a fear within me around the idea of processes. There is no denying their effectiveness, but you also can’t deny their ineffective attributes; like their affects on the innovative qualities your team sometimes requires. Granted, there are obvious situations in which you require them.

WordCamp Minneapolis 2015: Building and Running a Global Workforce

Published in Business on May 17, 2015

Recently I spoke at WordCamp Minneapolis 2015 on Building and Running a Global Workforce: The People Aspect of a Remote Company. While I usually speak about security, in this talk I share the challenges of a remote work force and speak about people issues, culture, growth challenges, scaling, and everything in between.

In June of 2014, I stepped into the role of CEO of Sucuri. In the presentation, I also share some of the lessons we have learned at Sucuri throughout the past five years of doing business at a global scale.

Check out the video of my presentation:

Watch The Video

A Culture of Yes

Published in Business on January 18, 2015

I have a friend, Chris Lema who loves to write about how much he says no, so much so that he has an entire tag dedicated to it. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

Your ability to decipher the noise from the rest, is a bit of an art, and saying yes to the wrong thing could take you down a rabbit hole that will never let you see the light of day. I’ve seen a number of companies fail to this, always chasing the golden nugget.

It is however, a bit misleading to you as an entrepreneur, more importantly as a manager and leader (there is a difference).

Culture: The Journey

Published in Business on January 15, 2015

For the better part of the past 7 months, my business partner, Daniel, and I have been infatuated with our culture. All aspects of it, what it really means, what it means to us, and more importantly, how is it defined.

I think the basis of the question has really been, who and what are we about?

I think we have always known, but we never really took the time to sit back and really capture it in a way that made sense to us, and even our own team.

Interestingly enough, what we’ve come to realize is that your culture is not really something you define, it’s something you are. I know, that’s deep!

Recognizing Your Culture

I think it was at our Quarter 3 board meeting in 2014 that we really started to capture, appreciate and recognize the culture that we had set in our business. Mind you, our business first opened it’s doors January 2010.

Like most first-time entrepreneurs though, our thoughts were nowhere around the idea of a culture as much as it was, figuring out if we really had a business.

Know it and Done it All’s

Published in Life on June 29, 2011

This is funny that I’m writing about this because some might say that I fall into this category, but I can’t help but think there are worst people than myself out there…:D

Granted, everyone has a topic or two that they are intimately familiar with and as such are able to engage and provide good sound advice and input. Then there are those people that just don’t shut up.

Office Politics

Published in Business on May 24, 2011

Office politics, that seems to be the theme these days. Never before have I been exposed to the interoffice and intercompany politics that I have been experiencing as of late. What’s most amusing is that it’s all levels, not just senior management, but the lowest levels as well. It is grossly overwhelming.

Technologies that support a Virtual Workforce

Published in Business on November 15, 2010

We live in a time where businesses are being forced to make difficult decisions about how they spend money when it comes to overhead type expenditures. One of the many things changing are ideals around telecommuting. Just today I had a conversation with my mother-in-law where she outlined new organizational initiatives in her company to consolidate floors at one of the buildings they own in Los Angeles.

As its fresh in my mind, I thought I would articulate some of my own thoughts around ways to effectively manage your team and projects when working in a geographically distributed model (a.k.a. virtual workforce).