Dream Teams Archives – Page 4 of 6

8 Apr 2010

Useful Software – From Drums to Real Collaboration

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:56:14-06:00April 8th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Software Development|

Way back during the Greek and Roman empires, if you were part of the forced labour (slave) on a galley ship the business rules and communication structure was pretty simple. The drum would beat and you would row. If you didn't bad things happened to you.

Since then we've moved from farming, to factories to information workers. Ships have moved from human propulsion to sails and now diesel engines.

When you move past one person on a project, the number of communication paths (links between people) grow quickly. With two people there is one bidirectional path, with three there are three, but with 4 […]

6 Apr 2010

Employee Slotting Tools

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:53:57-06:00April 6th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership|

Your company has just announced it is merging with another company. This isn’t just a small acquisition, it is big.

The problem is:

You have to merge two or more data sources,
You have to slot all the employees into the new organizational structure and pay scales,
Both companies have different performance measurement metrics,
The review means sharing data and slotting decisions across an international HR and management team,

And it has to be done in a very short time frame (yesterday usually).

Someone is likely to suggest using Excel.

But splitting data in Excel and merging it later is a big headache. But […]

12 Mar 2010

Is Your Business Encouraging Inefficiency?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:57:16-06:00March 12th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership|

I was recently taking the LRT (train) here in Calgary and noticed a repair crew working on the train platform.

There were three people: one with a hoe, one with a chipper shovel and one with a corn broom.

Two watched while one person worked. The guy with the hoe would pull off a loose tile, the guy with the chipper would chip out the mortar and the guy with the broom would sweep up the debris. The two not currently busy would carry on a conversation.

While it is easy to pick on these kinds of industries, it is more valuable […]

8 Mar 2010

Who is Keeping Score?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:57:27-06:00March 8th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

In order for you to hire the right (A) people, you need to build a scorecard defining their mission, expected outcomes and key competencies (reference is Who). This serves two benefits:

It allows you to objectively compare candidates,
It makes it clear to the new hire, what you want them to do.

This flows from your corporate strategy which when compared to your current staffing levels will determine who you need to hire to achieve your vision.

So really, you should have a scorecard for all of your key employees. For us and the way we are set up, all our employees are […]

7 Mar 2010

Being Indispensable and Type A Employees

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:57:35-06:00March 7th, 2010|Categories: Books and Courses, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

I just finished reading "Linchpin – Are You Indispensable" by Seth Godin. In the book he encourages you to make a difference in what you do, treat your work as an art, connect with people, get things done, and be the best you can be. The world is changing quickly and people who merely show up (cogs), are going to be marginalized. So be indispensable.

I just started reading another book called "Who – The A Method for Hiring" by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. I tripped across this one through the magic of Amazon. The premise of […]

12 Feb 2010

Hiring Developers in 2010

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:58:19-06:00February 12th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Software Development, Technology|

It looks like Sunwapta Solutions will be hiring in 2010 to support our current clients and our growth plans. This likely includes:

Marketing and Sales
Software Developers
Product Manager

The first hire will be a developer. The position has not been fully defined or posted yet, but if you know of a great intermediate to senior developer in Calgary with all or a bunch of the following skills please pass them on:

Strong object oriented design and development skills,
Current to leading edge C# and .NET framework,
Very strong in user interface (HTML, CSS, AJAX, Silverlight,WPF, etc.) design and development. You can make things happen on the user […]

31 Dec 2009

Why Not Be Great?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:19:16-06:00December 31st, 2009|Categories: Books and Courses, Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

It is funny how the closing of a year brings reflection on the past… and a fleeting commitment to fix all the things you weren't happy with.

Sure, getting rid of some destructive bad habits is a good thing. But is spending your time dwelling on your mistakes and trying to fix your non-talents (weaknesses) the way to go?

In "First, Break all the Rules…" by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, their research basically determined that you should focus on your talents and figure out ways to minimize the impact of your non-talents.

This is based on the science […]

18 Sep 2009

Employee Share Ownership – Alignment of Goals

By Doug Wagner|2017-07-26T21:26:37-06:00September 18th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|Tags: business strategy, employee engagement, Employee Share Ownership Program, ESOP, ESOP Builders, leadership, Perry Philips, small business, small business owner|

In my previous post on Strategy and Corporate Governance for Small Business, I talked about aligning Shareholder goals with the running of the company. This applies to employee share ownership as well.

When offering employees ownership you are making them shareholders.

Companies sometimes do this in an attempt to retain employees as the primary motive. However, there are issues:

Shares in a privately held company are not the same as a cash bonus. They are a paper benefit until they can be sold.
The goals of employee shareholders need to be in alignment with majority shareholders. If they are not then it might […]

4 Sep 2009

Outsourcing your HR Needs – Small Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:24:05-06:00September 4th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

Al and I finally reconnected with Kim Bechtel after losing touch a few years ago. We did a project for him while he was at the City of Calgary. Somehow we lost touch and then when Kim changed jobs, his contact information no longer worked.

Today Kim is the President and Chief Idea Officer at YourHRco (web site under construction).

He has been working in HR for many years but has decided to focus on HR strategy and services related to smaller businesses. Small business is different than the big companies and HR needs to be applied to helping small businesses with those […]

31 Aug 2009

Who Are You (and your Business)?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:24:50-06:00August 31st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Marketing, Sales|

Who are you? What matters? What do you stand for? What do you want to become?

At the core, the business and owners must be in synch for long-term success.

Sure you can buy a franchise for a proven business, say a muffler shop, but if you have absolutely no interest fixing cars it is going to be a long painful ride.

I've been running Sunwapta Solutions for over 9 years now and we never clearly defined this for ourselves… until now. Luckily strong ethics and doing good work were part of our core make up without thinking about it regularly.

If you just go with […]