Over the past 2 months, I’ve been running in the morning instead of commuting to work. Rather than listen to music, I just listen to the sounds of the street and think about work and my career. Two thoughts I’ve been having a lot these days: “Culture debt is what happens when companies don’t do…
Growth and development framework at Petal
A few weeks ago, I published this blogpost on my company’s Medium site: View at Medium.com If you’ve read my post about Competency Matrices, I think this one is better. My thinking has evolved somewhat. Curious to hear what people think of it? View at Medium.com View at Medium.com
To the lady CEO with the hat
I spoke on a panel regarding Performance Management at early-stage startups yesterday, and there was a question from the audience that I’ve been mulling over since. The question was, “As a startup CEO whose company just raised seed funding and has a handful of employees, how much should I really care about fostering an environment…
My notes for the Stack Summit panel on Performance Management
I was recently on a panel at Stacklist’s Stack Summit. Topic was Performance Management. We were given the questions a few days in advance, and I jotted notes down. They are below. What’s the measure of a good manager? How do you evaluate yourselves? → The health of their team — health = productivity +…
Fostering a Culture of Kindness
In keeping with my personal promise to write more, I published this post (https://medium.com/petal/fostering-a-culture-of-kindness-1b53bfa21854) for my company. Everything in the post is true from my perspective, although I admit that these kinds of posts are more for employer branding than for anything else. Sue
Story of Petal’s Values
It’s been ages, right? I generally have a hard time writing blogposts while working at a company because a) people automatically assume that I’m writing about my current experience, and b) I don’t really have the time. It’s too bad because I really love writing to think. I arrived at a solution: to make writing…
Top 10: Read This First
My blog is kind of disorganized and random. For those who want to skip to my favorites and/or the ones that readers have indicated are helpful, here is a list of the Top 10: Why Call It People versus Human Resources? Scope of the People Function Being a PM When Your Product is People Maximizing…
Disclaimer: The Views and Opinions Expressed in This Blog are Mine Only and Don’t Reflect the Views of Affiliated Organizations
When I started writing this blog about a year-and-half ago, I worried that people might take my words to be representative of the company I was working for at the time. This fear has prevented me from publishing many of my ideas; I have a catalogue of half-written posts lost in a swirl of ‘Untitled’…
Superpowers as Comparative Advantage
I get a bit irked whenever leadership consultants use the terminology, ‘superpower’, as in “What’s your superpower?” because it builds up the question too much, especially knowing that the answer will likely be a let-down, like, “I’m a great organizer” or “I’m very analytical”. That’s not really a ‘superpower’ based on my understanding of what…
Convergence of Philosophy and HR
When I switched majors from Molecular Biology to Philosophy in college, my rationale was, “Well, when I become a doctor (the original plan), I’ll never get exposure to philosophy, so I might as well learn it while I’m in school. That’s what a liberal arts education is about, after all!” Little did I know then…
Is “Authentic Networker” a Contradiction in Terms?
Yesterday, I sent an email out to >50 friends and advisors, letting them know that I’ve taken a new role at a Series A startup, and thanking them for their time and guidance through the search process. The length of the bcc list astounded me — I hadn’t realized until then that I had leaned…
Maximizing Flow States: A Key Goal of a Great People Organization
In recent years, the notion of ‘employee engagement’ has been elevated to a major raison d’etre for progressive People teams. There are seemingly tons of new companies pitching services and products to raise engagement, and a multitude of survey companies offering to more accurately measure and suggest actions to improve it. For neophytes, let me…