“’A poor supervisor is definitely the No. 1 factor that causes low productivity,’ said Barry L. Brown, President of a Florida-based consulting group. ‘It’s been my experience that a good supervisor will motivate, inspire, encourage and reward good performance. A poor supervisor, of course, is just the opposite, only in multiples. Employees who do not have a direct connection with the company begin to lose all the reasons for wanting to do that little bit extra and take the additional time to make something right.’”

“Via this blog (link in spanish) a guy, who works in the department of a Human Resources consultancy company, says they made a selection process in which, among other things, they asked for a person with ample experience in using the internet (navigation, searches, formats…). They received 50 candidacies, from which 30 came from Hotmail-directions, all of them erased as they entered.”

There’s nothing wrong with being unsure. If you’re a hacker thinking about starting a startup and hesitating before taking the leap, you’re part of a grand tradition. Larry and Sergey seem to have felt the same before they started Google, and so did Jerry and Filo before they started Yahoo. In fact, I’d guess the most successful startups are the ones started by uncertain hackers rather than gung-ho business guys.”

“When it comes to vacation, Netflix has a simple policy: take as much as you’d like. Just make sure your work is done. Employees at the online movie retailer often leave for three, four, even five weeks at a time and never clock in or out. Vacation limits and face-time requirements, says Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings, are ‘a relic of the industrial age.’”

“It is important that cofounders exhibit complementary skills and common objectives. Identify your weaknesses and make sure those are your cofounder’s strengths. I want to spend most of our effort on perfecting the presentation layer of our first product, but Adam makes sure we invest in our backend code so it is easily expandable to future product lines. Adam is good at Adam stuff; I’m good at Matt stuff; together we are good at Xobni stuff.”

John Maeda: “This week is potentially the busiest week of my life. There’s good busy, and there’s bad busy. I think this week qualifies as worst busy. Within the storm, I sat within the eye for a few minutes yesterday. I was leading a session on how the tenure system works at MIT with my colleague Prof. David Mindell. At this meeting, David shared his three secrets to life:

1. Take 24 uninterrupted hours of rest per week.
2. Don’t travel as it wastes time.
3. Say ‘no’ to meetings often.”

Real customer service: “The very first order I got was from a store called Lassen’s Market. Lassen’s ordered one case of this product I sell. So, I put the product in my electric car, and drove it the 35 miles to their store. The guy who signed for it, a really nice guy, was a little shocked to see me, but he signed for it, and I left. When I got home from the trip, there was a message from my broker asking ‘What did you just do?’ I told him ‘I dropped the product off. You said they ordered it, so I took it to them.’ He said, ‘They just called, and were so amazed that you brought the product to them that they want to order four more cases!’ I told him, ‘OK, whatever you say,’ and so I drove back again.”

“I’ve compiled a small list (or rant) of some very basic and fundamental rules that all webmasters must learn and respect when developing a website that needs to make actual money. This list can also be used by companies looking to hire a web development firm or to evaluate an already deployed website project.”

“In a productive, well-ordered life two elements must be managed: time and work. Poor time-managers fail to recognize the difference between the two elements: Work is infinite; time is finite. Therefore, you must manage your time, not your work.”

“I had the opportunity to take part in a session of teamwork training this week, which is always a joy. The trainer reminded us of a classic led us through a model used by effective teams to implement core values into their daily practices.  The model is called B.A.S.K., which is short for Behavior, Attitudes, Skills, Knowledge.”

“In the Star Wars movie’s famous bar scene you knew, by their appearance, what zany character was sitting beside you. Each character had a distinctive look. Yet in business meetings you may have no idea about the group of characters with whom you’re meeting. That’s because their normal outward appearances belie often troublesome behavior. Want to learn more about the crazy cast of characters you’re likely to encounter in your business meetings?”

Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website. I often write about the top mistakes in Web design, but what are the top things you can do to make more money? Following here are 10 Internet tactics with a particularly high return on investment (ROI).

“Driving home, I started to think about the discontinuity in the graph of salespeople. Discontinuities are interesting, because that’s where you can see how a system works. In this case, it’s obvious that a great salesperson is going to sell far, far more than a good one. Nine women working together can’t have a baby in one  month, and ten good salespeople still aren’t going to close the account that a great one could. That’s because it’s not a linear scale. The great ones reach out. They work the phones when they’re not first in line. They understand what a customer wants. They’re not just better than good. They’re playing a totally different game.”

“All of the possible methods of bringing customers value—anything from more-efficient production lines to new products and services—boil down to just three fundamental strategies. All business models can be seen as one of these three things, or a combination of two or more. In that light, the best way to tweak a business model is to find a new combination of building blocks that better fits market conditions.”

“The reason I know so much about being late is because recently, I have been late a lot. So I have been telling myself that each time I am late I have to honestly think about what sort of behavior is causing me to be late, and write it down.”