Anyone who knows me or has read this blog knows how much I love sports. I’ve written in previous blogs about the benefits of playing team sports, but what about following teams and being a FAN? Some people think, “what’s the point?” Beyond what I believe to be the best entertainment and drama, I also love that sports can be simple in terms of the black and white nature of having winners and losers and beginnings and ends to games and seasons. In sports, you know where you stand and if you need to change.
For instance, the Minnesota Timberwolves, while adding young talent the last few years, have continued to miss the playoffs. So, in the last two years they have brought in a new coach and now completely revamped their roster. The results of the past are clear and nobody can really argue that some changes are needed. For teams that have won championships or have come close, it’s a little more difficult to know how much change is needed, but contracts expiring, aging players and new free agents during an offseason create a time for change each team shuffles its roster to various degrees.
What about business? There is no offseason to review where you are, step back and make changes to the roster and direction of your team. There is not quite a scoreboard that defines whether you are winning or losing either. So, it’s the role of leadership to see when changes can benefit the business and its customers while not disrupting business because there is no offseason. Furthermore, it’s the role of leadership to create a sense of a company scoreboard to judge a company’s progress against its goals. And even when a company is winning it is often necessary to make big changes to scale as business grows.
Cyber Advisors is in that exact position today. As we have steadily grown, we’ve made key decisions and hires to scale and better meet the needs of our growing customer base. This week we brought a new VP of Managed Services on board. Ryan Vinje brings a wealth of talent and enthusiasm to the position and we are excited for the impact he will have on our employees, customers and company culture.
At Cyber Advisors, we have spent time this past year working on improving the employee onboarding process and understand the importance it has on a new employee’s experience. My favorite thing about our company is our continuous commitment to improve and not think “we are there yet.” This was an interesting article from the Harvard Business Review on onboarding a new executive like Ryan and also has a nice little test to put your company through to check its onboarding effectiveness.
- I don’t think I need to introduce you to LinkedIn. Anyone in business knows about it and the impact it has had in our lives professionally. But perhaps I can introduce you to the founder of LinkedIn’s new podcast called Masters of Scale. Reid Hoffman has a pretty impressive list of first ring contacts in his LinkedIn profile and he uses those to discuss all the hot topics a growing company might face. Check out the website here or look up the show on your favorite way to listen to podcasts. Among his first guests are Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt and Reed Hastings.
- For many Cyber Advisors employees the hiring of Ryan Vinje means a new leader that they will now report to. Having a new director can be an anxious time for some employees, but the best ones see it as an opportunity to make positive changes and build a strong relationship. There are a lot of articles out there about having a new boss thrust upon you, but if you find yourself in this position take a look at this one. I found it to have great advice including using your first meeting to review your skills and how they are used.
- Finally, a little amusing news story worth sharing includes a man who got stuck in an ATM. Read that article here.