People are what matters most. In businesses people make the difference. All great (tech) companies have shifted their focus on to attracting and retaining talent. Company culture is one of the main success factors for keeping people motivated. Company culture and people management that's what this presentation is about.

1. How Pirates
treat People
HackerNews Meetup Cologne
October 2011

2. manuel koelman | dutch entrepreneur | living in
cologne | currently working on getcontext.de |
co-funder of talential.com | practical
philosopher | piratesummit.com | interested in
agile, lean and productivity | ecommerce guy |
caotina lover | traveler | cheese addicted

3. PIRATES
WHY I DO WHAT I DO?

4. "Entrepreneurship is
throwing yourself off a cliff
and building a plane on the
way down."
Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

5. Are you a pirate?
That thrill of your first hire, when you’ve convinced some
other crazy soul to join you in your almost certainly
doomed project. The high from raising venture capital and
starting to see your name mentioned in the press. The
excitement of launch and…gulp…customers! and the
feeling of truly learning something useful, you’re just not
sure what it is, when the company almost inevitably
crashes and burns.
- Mike Arrington, Techcrunch

6. PEOPLE
MATTER MOST.

7. (In the beginning) you only
need people who contribute
DIRECT value to your service.
You don’t need managers nor CFOs nor “strategy” guys.

8. Finding the right
people is hard.
So is keeping them motivated.

9. Passion is infectious.
Set an example.
Be positive.
Motivate.

10. Commitment.
Especially the founding team.
If you are not committed why would anybody else be?

11. Create momentum
in short iterations.
Again and again and again and again.

12. Define your values.
Recheck and confirm again and again.

13. Our mission
„Our mission is to continue to
efficiently facilitate diverse
methods of empowerment
and professionally disseminate
performance based
deliverables to meet our
customer‘s needs.“
Forget that.

14. Values are mindset,
behaviour and actions.
Stuff that is reflected in your everyday work.
It‘s about what you do, not what you say.

15. Freedom and responsibility
vs. command-and-control.

16. How we do it at Talential
» Revise from time to time with
the whole team (at least every
Rules of interaction time a new employee joins)
-Max. 10 rules » Have everyone participate
-Concise and specific
-Real i.e. actionable
» Have a common agreement
» Change, add, delete, whenever
the team thinks it is necessary

17. Be transparent.
Information is visible to everyone by default.

18. Work is not a place.
Let the people choose where they
want to work.

19. Virtual organizations require
trust and communication.
A lot of it.
Again and again and again.

20. Use efficient communication
tools like activity streams, Wiki,
Google Docs etc.
That‘s a no-brainer, seriously.

21. Be prompt.
Bad news doesn‘t get better with age.

22. Involve everybody.
Important and strategic decisions will be
discussed (and decided) by everyone.

23. Be humble.
Respect the competition.

24. Leadership is defined
by followership
No job titles.
Employees may choose their own job titles. Whatever they
like or what fits best for the situation.

25. Better to beg for
forgiveness than to
ask for permission.

26. Results count.
Process matters.

27. Communication is key.
However…

29. Interruptions kill
productivity.
Respect others time and flow.

30. Embrace change.
Decisions are temporary.

31. Don‘t forget.
Working with people is
a process, not an event.
It takes time, patience and perseverence.
Again and again and again.

32. ?
Any questions

33. Find me around the net Websites
@manuelkoelman www.getcontext.de
www.talential.com
fb.com/koelman
www.leanentrepreneur.com
de.linkedin.com/in/koelman www.23moments.com