Dream Teams Archives – Page 3 of 6

27 Nov 2012

Secret: Employees Don’t Need To Know That (or Do They?)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:34:16-06:00November 27th, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

There seems to be a fair number of businesses that believe the key to their success is knowledge… tightly held knowledge.

Secrets.

Such important secrets that not even employees need to know.

Classified-RF

They want to hire great employees and grow their businesses. They want their business to run without them so they can:

Focus on the bigger picture,
Take longer vacations without having to stay connected,
Work less hours,
Grow the business,
Etc.

The key to this is delegation.

So they delegate pieces to a few key managers. Not too much.

Just enough so they can […]

21 Oct 2012

Your Culture Doesn’t Grow in a Petri Dish

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:35:01-06:00October 21st, 2012|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

Your brand is how people outside your company perceive your company, products and services.

You don't control your brand. After all, you don't control people or what they think.

It used to be that you could buy a brand image if you had enough money to spend on advertising.

This is becoming more difficult if not impossible; especially for the smaller players.

You can influence your brand.

Petri-Dish Image courtesy of moomsabuy | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Your Culture

Your company culture is determined by your values, behavior and consistency on how you […]

9 Apr 2012

The 7 Unspoken Truths About Pay for Performance

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:39:10-06:00April 9th, 2012|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership|

Pay for performance normally works something like this. You figure out goals for each employee that ties back to the overall corporate objective and then set the employees variable pay (bonus or incentive) based on the degree to which the employee meets those objectives.

Carrots
There are 7 unspoken truths about why most organizations fail to make pay for performance work very well.

1. The Planning Horizon is Too Long

Most pay for performance planning cycles are based on a yearly cycle. Business is fast paced and things are constantly changing. If […]

2 Dec 2011

Proof that Values, Purpose and Culture Are Important

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:42:06-06:00December 2nd, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

Lisa Petrilli offers real proof that successful companies consider their values, purpose and culture to be extremely important. Not only that they live and breath it.

What CEOs Really Think About Values and Culture

This is something I have believed in strongly for quite a while and have even been building into our new product; because it is important.

What is your experience and thoughts on this?

16 Mar 2011

Software Developer Extraordinaire

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:01-06:00March 16th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Software Development|

We are hiring some more technical people.

We have recently been readdressing things like mission, vision and culture. To me fulfilling live means a balance of achievement, relationships and fun.

So when I wrote the job description for a great developer, I decided to have some fun… and hopefully share some of that fun with our applicants (and anyone else who reads it).

This is the most fun I've had doing this and it reinforces the idea that work should be fun. Looking for lots more opportunities for that.

It is also a good opportunity to see what we think makes a great developer. So […]

12 Mar 2011

Getting 100% Employee Engagement

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:06-06:00March 12th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership|

HR professionals (even enlightened ones) and business consultants often talk about the "fact" that employees generally are giving 80% effort and the having them fully engaged can bring them up to 100% plus (110% or 120%) effort. This gap is called discretionary effort and is the recipe for business success.

Our mission involves helping people (and thus businesses) acheive their full potential; so I am all over the idea in general. But, as with anything, you need to really understand what it means.

Defining Max Effort

To me 100% effort means holding back nothing; giving it your all. So what does someone mean when […]

7 Mar 2011

Infrastructure and Development Support Specialist – Opening

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T14:28:59-06:00March 7th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Software Development, Technology|

Sunwapta Solutions is in growth mode and hiring people for our Calgary location.

The job title is negotiable. The outcomes we want to achieve are not.

We are looking for someone to work closely with our development team to drive out the architecture and support our hosting environments, look after our internal infrastructure, help support the applications and databases, and provide support to our developers.

The full description is available in the careers section of our company website.

(We will also be looking for a software developer in the very near future.)

6 Mar 2011

A Better Method For Hiring

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:15-06:00March 6th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

We are back in hiring mode. But we are also changing the way we think about hiring.

Traditionally, companies write a short description of of the job followed by a list of the essential knowledge and skills. Potential employees don't get a lot of details about what is expected of them until the interview and post-hiring phase.

It is also difficult to tell if there is a match between the company's mission and culture and the potential employee. For instance, you may be told that a company is in the top 100 employers category. But what does that really mean? It certainly […]

21 Oct 2010

Sunwapta Solutions is Growing

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:50:39-06:00October 21st, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Software Development|

In the next couple of weeks I will be adding a careers/jobs section to our website and fleshing out the specific requirements.

We are growing and looking to make some strategic hires over the next month to year. We are expanding both our consulting practices and our products divisions.

We are going to be looking at cultural fit and aptitude ahead of technical skills (which can be learned).

So far I see the following positions required in no particular order:

Product Manager
Infrastructure Support
User Interface Designer/Developer
Developers
Sales and Marketing

Product Manager – A person who can own the product, get input from all stakeholders and plan out […]

17 May 2010

A Chameleon – An Adaptable Salary Administration Tool

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:50:43-06:00May 17th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership|

Back in 2001 we built a web-based data merging tool for human resource and pension data. There were about 7 sources of data and every time the data didn’t match for an employee, someone had to go in and make a decision as to which version (if any) was correct. This was happening across a dispersed team so a web front-end and shared database back-end made sense.

Recently we built a salary administration tool in Excel. The technology choice was made before we entered the picture and it turned out to be totally the wrong architecture. Excel is great, but not for this […]