Tag Archive for: Human Resources

How To Talk To People: Stratlab Human Resource Policy 014

May 28, 2019/in Advice, Customer Service, Strategy/by Jeph

Elon Musk’s Work Productivity Tips For Tesla Employees

May 6, 2018/in Advice, Motivation, Stories/by Jeph

You Can Judge a Company By the Way Their People Treat you

Sep 24, 2017/in Consumer Behaviour, Leadership, Strategy/by Jeph

Why Stratlab Doesn’t Have a CEO, President or Formal Boss

May 9, 2017/in Advice, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy/by Jeph

My Favourite Business Book of All Time

Apr 17, 2017/in Advice, Books, Community, Consumer Behaviour, Design, Innovation, Leadership, Stories, Strategy/by Jeph

The Best Resume Ever

Dec 8, 2016/2 Comments/in Human Resources, Marketing/by Jeph

Are You Hiring? // Eps 56 #InTheLab

Dec 1, 2016/in Advice, Marketing, Regina, Video/by Jeph

Why HR Sucks & What To Do About It

Jun 16, 2016/in Advice, Human Resources, Presentations, Video/by Jeph

Why HR Sucks & What To Do About It

Presented at the Disrupt HR event put on in May 2016 in Regina, SK. My very first Human Resources Presentation.

HR Sucks & What To Do About It

Organizational charts suck.
Company hierarchies suck.
The traditional HR part of business sucks.
No one loves dealing with peoples problems, so HR is the hardest department in any company. Think about it, they have the hardest job out of anyone!!

~~HR Sucks~~ the traditional business model sucks.
But it doesn’t have to suck.
HR doesn’t have to suck.
You can do it differently.
You have to do it differently.
You don’t have to be traditional at all.
Break the rules.
Don’t have a company hierarchies.
Use the Virgin Model of company hierarchy (one visionary at the centre and everyone else a spoke in the wheel).
What if everyone is equal?

Stop trying to tell people what to do. It’s annoying. Who actually likes being told what to do? NO ONE! So why do we do it? Ego. Instead of telling people what to do, inspire them to want to do it. This is a lesson that took me 8 years of coaching volleyball to learn. You can’t tell anyone what to do….for very long. Sure you can do it once or twice to correct bad attitude or behaviour, but if you keep doing it you’re pushing your staff away.

There’s a better way to manage in 2016 and it has nothing to do with managing at all. It has everything to do with leading. Leaders do the right thing even when no one is looking. Leaders serve others. Leaders do the hardest job possible and never look for credit. Leaders never boast, leaders care for others. Leaders build you up and give you confidence. Leaders allow you to fail because that’s how humans learn. Leaders are what we all strive to be.

Pay people for what they do not the title they hold.

What if we got paid for what we do not what title on the door or letters behind our names? Yes it’s much easier to hide behind a title or be lazy because you have 10 letters behind your name. But in the new world no one cares how many degrees you have. That’s not a definition of intelligence anymore. A degree simply means you have an above average memorization skill. Ones’ number of acquired University degrees tend to have an inverse relationship with ones’ social intelligence.

Use policy with caution. No great company was made because of a “policy”.
Have a strong set of values and stick to them. All successful companies have a strong set of values.

We don’t need factory workers anymore!

Be more flexible with your people.
Be friends with your staff.
Have mental health days.
Don’t have a limit on holidays.
Talk about culture or no one else will.
HR is nothing if it’s not a mission. (thanks Hugh)
Don’t wait for someone to do it for you or your organization. Step up, take initiative and do something.

Be the change you want to see in your HR department.

Why HR Sucks & What To Do About It from Jeph Maystruck

Human First, Everything Else Later || Eps 31 of #InTheLab

Sep 25, 2015/in Blogging, Innovation, Leadership, Motivation/by Jeph

Humans vs Robots || Eps 21 #InTheLab

Jul 13, 2015/2 Comments/in Innovation, Research, Social Media, Stories, Video/by Jeph

Humans vs Robots, a series of Podcasts produced by NPR’s Planet Money Podcast that are nothing short of amazing. The first one I listened to on the way to presentation in Saskatoon, I used one of the stories in my presentation. It was that good!

As the human race progresses, we invent easier ways to do things. The lightbulb put the candle makers out of business. They were outraged. Why wouldn’t people support the candle makers anymore? Doesn’t society have a duty to support the candle makers?!?

The car put horse and carriage drivers out of business. The Better Business Bureau put the snake oil salesmen out of business. Cassette tape put the record stompers out of business, the digital camera put Kodak out of business, Napster put 60% of the record industry out of business, Google put the phone book out of business, what do you think will be next? Are you in that industry? Better yet, are you in the industry that’s going to displace a current market?

Dr. Nick Bontis talking about industry displacement and why you need to retool, relearn, re-certify, re-professionalize to stay relevant.

The Planet Money Podcast

Human vs Robots

In this podcast they lineup three competitions of the epic showdown, HUMANS vs ROBOTS!

Battle 1: Who can fold a towel better?. At MIT there’s a project that has students developing an algorithm that allows a robot to reach into a load of laundry, grab a towel, and fold it in to a prefect square. The students did just that, but it took the robot 18 minutes to complete the task. They also had a young child try folding a towel. It took less than a minute.

Humans 1 Robots 0

Battle 2 was Ellie. Ellie is a computer program that interacts with people. It was made for people with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe depression. The theory was that some people just won’t open up to another human, what they’ve been through sometimes it too traumatic to tell someone. But it’s easier to talk to a machine that won’t judge you.

Ellie the psychologist This part in the podcast is worth listening to alone. They have a war vet from the Canadian Military talking about his experience with Ellie, it was a positive one. His story is a moving one, I won’t ruin it for you. Go listen to it!

Human 1 Robots 1

Battle 3; who can write faster a machine or a journalist from the BBC?

Yup, they’ve created a machine to write the news. All the major websites (Reuters, Yahoo news, Huffington Post, etc.) have stories created by WordSmith, a software program that can write news articles. All you need is a companies annual report (the competition in the story was based on Denny’s annual report) and WordSmith puts together an article that isn’t fancy but gets the point across.

The result? WordSmith took two minutes to finish the articles, the journalist took just over seven minutes however the journalist had a little more flare to his article.

The judges had to give it to the robots.

Humans 1 Robots 2

The Machine Comes to Town

This is a story about a small town in the US that’s slowly being taken over by factories, and no, not traditional manufacturing factories, robotically run factories. This is completely changing the job landscape for many people in North America. It’s scary but you can’t stop technology, some how you have to get a head of the curve.

iWaiter

The future of restaurants will involve this thing called Ziosk. It’s like an iPad for your table where you can order on, get a drink refill, and order dessert. What will happen to waitresses and waiters? They interviewed some of the staff at an Applebee’s that has Ziosk’s. The wait staff hate it, not surprisingly, but it shortens table turnaround (very valuable in casual dining) and increases dessert sales by 30%.

Just think, you may be ordering your next meal from a machine, who will you tip? Do machines need tips? The future will tell.

The Last Job

This podcast is a fictional story of “the last job”. It’s kind of funny, but also somewhat erie. What will we do in the future? We won’t all be working. What will we spend our time doing? It’s an interesting thought.

Cheryl Lloyd

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Nicholas Villani

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Jeff LS Security

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Doug Dimen

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Smb Construction

Fantastic experience with this company. They made things very easy and at a very affordable price. Will definitely continue to use this company in the future.

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I honestly don't even know where to start with this crew over at Strategy Lab! We went to them on a whim from recommendations by a few other entrepreneurs in our city. We went to them over the big name companies who specialize in what Strategy Lab does because of the love that was being shown from people they'd worked with. To say we were blown away is an understatement!!! Jeph, David, Carter and Brandon took our social media and marketing to a whole new level and not just that but helped develop us into managing it ourselves in the end. They helped us create awesome content for our website and social media game as well as our advertising campaigns. Content the grabbed our audience and increased all of our viewing and impressions on everything we posted. Thank you doesn't cover the feelings of gratitude we have for the team at Strategy Lab. We cannot wait to see what they can help us do in the next year!! PS, we've only been working with them for 5 months!

Brenda MacLauchlan

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Jenni Bast

The Strategy Lab Crew will always be my GO TO for Marketing business and help. They did a (Real Estate) Business Video for me about 5 years ago and I am still proud to share it around the on-line world today. They are innovative thinking, creative minded, professional, approachable & a fun group of people. I have went to their past Social Media courses and have learned a lot. I have and will continue to refer anyone and everyone to them as I think very highly of them and their work!

Matt Robertson

Not all heroes wear capes. We wanted to make a difference in our community by undertaking an ambitious charity event. These things tend to be a lot more wok than anticipated and it was obvious the event would need a strong web presence to grow. That is where Strategy Lab became not a vendor, but a partner. Very quickly in our engagement with their passionate team, the vision of a website transferred from our shoulders to theirs. They took the ball and ran with it and the resulting website is incredible and much better than anything we could have envisioned. Thanks to their efforts, our plans for an annual charity event have grown quickly, and the impact in our community is significant. If you want an innovative and energetic team to make your online presence shine; look no further.

Tag Archive for: Human Resources

You can judge a company by the way their people treat you

How did they get it so right?

“You can either fit in or stand out but you can’t do both.” -Seth Godin

Yes he IS Gumin’ At You!

So the real question is did it work?

Pay people for what they do not the title they hold.

We don’t need factory workers anymore!

Be the change you want to see in your HR department.

Dr. Nick Bontis talking about industry displacement and why you need to retool, relearn, re-certify, re-professionalize to stay relevant.

The Planet Money Podcast

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