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"Pay for performance" has been around for a while, but the results of implementing it in companies have been varied. It's an easy concept to understand --pay people when they produce results!--but it's not as easy to implement.

Performance reviews weren't a priority when launching GotVMail, and still weren't while fueling our amazing growth. However, at the start of this year, it was clear performance reviews were ineffective: the process was confusing to managers, resulting in delays or missed reviews, and they provided little value to employees. Rather than put a system like this in place, which took old fashioned paper-based processes and digitized them, we wanted to efficiently link pay with individual goals and company alignment.

"Pay for performance" is a concept that's so straight-forward that it's easy to just dump it into a business. However, this hands-off factor contributes to its failure rate and lack of long term viability. Rather than throw this system into the performance structure at GotVMail, we defined a framework that would take a number of quarters to fully implement. It will need refinement, but ultimately it will provide valuable as well as timely feedback to employees, while rewarding behavior and actions closer to the time they occur with quarterly bonus pay. Here's the plan:

• Company Alignment: Every company, large or small--and especially the truly entrepreneurial ones--needs to be driving in the same direction at every level of the company. This means making sure people are aligned around common goals, all the time--not just when it's convenient. It also needs to happen at all levels, from the most junior person to the executive team.
• Goals Culture: Once aligned, people need to be driving on a daily basis towards SMART goals, which are cascaded from each department and then, ultimately, unifed within the scheme of company goals. Understanding the difference between 'tasks' and 'goals' and boosting the ability to think in this way is critical.
• Coaching and Career Development: While the company works towards clear goals together, people need to establish a vested interest in the process by integrating their personal goals with their goals as an employee. Career development is the missing link that provides personal direction and commitment to the goals of your organization.

With this framework in mind, a true "pay for performance" culture is theoretically attainable--and sustainable. Here at GotVMail, we're eager to apply this theory, and see the results. We've completed our first full quarter cycle of reviews, learned a lot about ratings scale alignment as well as setting goals or "goal-setting." The end of the 4th quarter represents our second full cycle, and it's the first time we'll have a quarterly performance opportunity incentive (bonus) tied to the results. Check back here as my company goes through this process, learns the ins and outs (as well as experiences the major mistakes), and implements a truly productive "pay for performance" structure.

(Note: I recently heard a speaker talking about performance reviews and he suggested using the name "progress reviews" to be more positive, and I am considering making this shift. For the time-being, however, I'm sticking to the term "performance reviews")

Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win by William C. Taylor and Polly G. Labarre This was a very quick read because it was engaging right from the start. Excellent real-life examples from companies that truly do things differently. Not a traditional management study with a framework and suggested themes. Instead, the book really allows the reader to take away the points that are meaningful to him/her. Key takeaways/notes (not a summary): Why would great people work here (at my business, or anyone else's)? - Best companies have answer Company vocabulary Company University - Pixar was a great example of helping employees advance in areas beyond the company or position Job candidates are customers

This post is about something I have really strong opinions about: work. Some people hate going to work, and for a variety of reasons. When people hate going to work, they aren't productive and when they aren't productive... Well, you get the point.

One of the reasons I think people hate going to work is that the companies people work for have no identifiable core values. At the end of the day, if your employees don't know the company purpose and the values (which are non-negotiable tenets of the way you do business) then you've failed them--you've given them no reason to get excited about coming into work each day, and no reason to relate to the goals of your company.

This is a topic I'll continue to write about, but today I wanted to share this video with you. It's from Atlassian, and John Rotenstein and he has made an awesome video which highlights--in Atlassian employees' own words--what their core values are. The Atlassian core value that's one of my favorites is "DFTC": "don't fuck the customer." Yup, that's right. It's such a basic concept--don't make it harder for the customer to do anything--but it's pure genius. It's also a "big picture" concept that anyone can understand why pursuing that goal is important. Roteinstein's video is a great example of how vital core values are to a company because it shows how employees take them to heart, and incorporate them into their lives--and all in their own words. It also shows that it's not just about getting a project done, but also creating a work environment that makes people comfortable and understanding that changes that you make to anything have to work for the customer.

Anyway, I'm done writing. Watch the video and you'll see why it's no surprise the staff at Atlassian enjoys coming to work each day. We (my company, GotVMail, that is) happen to be a happy customer of Atlassian as well, using JIRA, Confluence and a few other applications.

In a sea of competitors offering the same service, companies that want to survive (and thrive) simply have to put their unique stamp on goods and services. Essentially, they must do business differently.

So what exactly is "doing business differently"? A really good example comes courtesy of JetBlue, the airline that prides itself on offering a friendlier (and funnier) flying experience. Part of what makes the company so different is that they really do live up to their friendly image, and flying is therefore a bit less stressful. And TV at every seat does not hurt either.

But what really makes JetBlue different is their desire to take calculated risks.

Case in point: JetBlue recently announced that they'd be expanding their services at a time when other airlines are cutting costs and putting the brakes on new projects. Is this a mistake? If the risk is calibrated properly, my answer is "no." Why? JetBlue has done their homework, and that's the first step in evaluating whether or not a potentially risky move could spell disaster or not.

Nicole Wong of the Boston Globe profiled JetBlue on October 21st, revealing the company's plans to make Boston one of three cities integral to their expansion project. It's all due to the unique composition of the market in Boston: you've got a steady supply of students flying in and out of Logan every day, with no signs of slowing, and a solid amount of business travelers, such as myself. In addition, the article points out, there's a growing demand for shuttling groups to and from events across the country. Boston boasts successful sports teams on both the professional and college levels, as well as biotech companies moving key team members, both of which require a plane to get them where they need to go. For JetBlue, it's a lucrative market that has the potential to become even more so if they play their cards right.

But JetBlue isn't just expanding without doing a little maintenance. It appears they're willing to do what it takes to pull in customers that don't already rely on their 26 non-stop flights out of Boston, more than any other carrier out of Logan. Doing what it takes will, according to JetBlue, include boosting in-flight internet access, as well as doing a better job of promoting some of JetBlue's amenities such as refundable fares and substantially more flights than competitors. According to the Globe piece, JetBlue's Chief Executive, David Barger said, "The business customers are saying, 'Give me at least three [flights] a day, or four a day, or five a day,'". The customers spoke, and apparently, JetBlue listened.

I know from personal experience that it's hard to find a non-stop flight to a preferred destination out of Logan, but when I do find it, it's usually from JetBlue. In fact, I regularly fly from Boston to Austin, Texas, where GotVMail's second outpost is located. I've never been unhappy with JetBlue's services, so the idea that they're only going to improve upon them is exciting.

JetBlue's approach is reminiscent of that taken by Southwest Airlines, the airline that originally did things differently (an idea discussed at length in Mavericks At Work). Both JetBlue and Southwest take the institutionalized quality that other airlines often have, and make customer satisfaction and freedom their primary concerns. During times in our history when it seems like businesses are thinking of anything except the regular person just trying to visit their family or close a deal on a business trip, that's a pretty smart move.

As an entrepreneur, you often find yourself with a jumble of different business ideas floating around in your head at any given point in time. If you settle on pursuing one of those ideas and start shaping it into a solid vision for a business, the next step is articulating all of the fundamental concepts that support your idea (e.g., a business plan). This can be really difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs--we're so excited to jump right into something new that we forget that sometimes it's important to be methodical.

A few months back when GotVMail was engaging in an executive level strategy session and crystallizing our core values, I had lots of ideas floating around in my head--but this time it wasn't about which business idea I wanted to pursue, it was about the amazing things still in store for the company. Despite the fact that my company is past its infancy and well into its childhood, as a team we wanted to ensure our collective focus was aligned, and actually effective when executed. We also wanted to nurture our identity from the inside out, to lay the foundation for the future, but it was difficult with so many opinions on the table.

Two weeks earlier I attended a talk given by Cameron Herold for EO Boston during which Collective Next produced an amazing graphic representation of the ideas discussed at his presentation. The way the facilitator visually deconstructed the ideas about creating a world class "work culture" struck me as incredibly useful and very productive. The even more amazing part was that Cameron and the facilitator never met before the event, or prepared any graphics in advance; they didn't require any interaction during the process, they just produced an amazing visual on-the-spot. (It's unfortunate there's no video of this, since the process is fascinating.) Since I'm a visual learner, "seeing the ideas" as we discussed them really helped me retain the overarching principles of the topic at hand. At that point, I knew that in order to drive the executive level strategy session, we had to do a series of graphic facilitation exercises.

This is how it worked for us: a really talented graphic facilitator we obtained through Collective Next came to our strategy sessions. With very little coaching or knowledge of the topics, she was able to create--in real time--a visual representation of all our discussion points, in one easy-to-share visual. As a result of the graphic facilitation, we were able to come up with lively and informative visual notes for the sessions. Individuals were able to review the documents at their leisure outside of the sessions, too, since we had the representations disseminated to key players via email.

Planning, strategizing, and articulating your core ideologies and goals isn't the sexiest way to spend your time as an entrepreneur, but if you don't do that in the beginning of your business, trust me, in order to grow, you will need to do it at some point. Our graphic facilitation exercises really helped us take that next step in growing GotVMail, and it helped us formulate our core values as a company.

We're now considering using graphic facilitation in a number of different areas. I recently discovered The Grove, a company that offers pre-packaged solutions as well as training in the graphic facilitation skill set. If you feel like you need a little help getting to that next level, I highly recommend using a process such as this.

Update: Kristen Schaefer of Grove was nice enough to provide a great resource for finding a local graphic record, Visual Practitioners Association.

Over the past few quarters we've made a serious effort with the entire executive team at GotVMail to crystallize the core values that unite us as a company. After three weeks of discussion and writing (and re-writing), we arrived at an acronym that represented the core values of our company: GARY (the name of our cartoon mascot): "Go Above and Beyond", "Always Entrepreneurial", "Radically Passionate", and "Your Team."

We also combined our core values with our core purpose to "Empower Entrepreneurs to Succeed," and we created what we believed was a very powerful message that speaks to our work culture. In addition to representing us as a company, we also thought it helped inspire both current and prospective employees, as well as partners.

Defining the core values of your company is a serious endeavor, but we certainly didn't want them to turn out to be this lofty set of ideas that were too mighty for practical application. We also wanted to disseminate our core values in a fun, lighthearted way--in other words, we didn't want people to be afraid of using them. But how would we get people talking about them?

The answer came one night when I was flipping around tv channels and landed on an episode of The Tonight Show. The featured guest was Gary Busey, of reality tv and (some) film fame. For someone who appeared to have been through the ringer in more ways than one, Gary had an uncanny knack for making acronyms from regular words (that actually made sense). That night on Leno, Busey dazzled with an acronym for the word "team": Together Everyone Achieves More. I'm still surprised both Gary Busey and late-night tv watching could be so darn inspiring, but that night, the idea for the Gary Busey videos was born.

After putting the finishing touches on our core values and going over various ideas, the Gary Busey videos went into production. The result was our core values video, starring Busey, which debuted during our Q3 company meeting. Shortly thereafter, the videos were up on YouTube along with the rest of the viral ad campaign we'd produced.

The response to the videos has been amazing: the musician John Mayer blogged about them and the Daily News talked up the campaign on Page Six. People "got" the humor of doing these videos with a guy like Gary Busey, and I think also appreciated that we, as a company, could take ourselves a little less seriously than others. As a result of the immensely positive response, we decided that the videos would be an effective recruiting and marketing tool--it would help people understand what working at GotVMail is like: fun, unusual, and without a doubt, never predictable.

With all of the strife people are experiencing due to the economy, it's only natural that we're seeing the resurgence of news stories offering ways to save money on everything from gas to your daily lunch. We'd probably rather forget the circumstances causing us to search for ways to save money, but stories like the one that ran in the Wall Street Journal last week--"Bagging Lunch: The Inflation Effect"--highlight the ways in which employers can step up and help mitigate the effects of the rising cost of living for their employees.

One of the companies featured in the WSJ article was my company, GotVMail. We started GotLunch, a program that gives every employee a $5 daily credit for use towards lunch from a variety of local sandwich shops and delis. Since we don't have a cafeteria in our building and lunch often entails getting in a car and driving to find food, we thought it would make more sense (and save people gas) if employees could just get their lunch close to home and for a lower cost, too.

We get all of this done via our VMeals interface, through which people order their meal for either one or two days or the entire week. The keys to success have been simple:

1. Easy - Online interface accepts credit cards (if employees go over their $5 allowance each day) and is automated, so no manual processing is required. Also, whether you order in the morning or order in advance, lunch is always there.
2. Lots of selection - Hot and cold options in addition to standard salads and sandwiches and from multiple vendors.
3. Free delivery - GotVMail's lunches are individually labeled and dropped off in our kitchen. GotVMail People never pay a delivery fee.

GotVMail's GotLunch program helps in the following ways (besides the obvious benefit of lower cost lunches):

• Lets people use their time how they want to. GotVMail People no longer have to go out to get lunch, and those who get their lunch delivered now have more time to do other stuff like take a walk, catch up with coworkers, or nap on one of the GotVMail couches or chairs (they're really comfortable).
• Gives people more flexible lunch options. Cuts down on the amount of brown bag lunches people have to bring, and offers those who normally bring their own the choice of additional hot lunch options.
• Supports local businesses. GotVMail People choose their lunches from menus offered by local delis and sandwich shops, so we're helping to drive business to other small businesses in the area (many of which are family owned and operated).
• Gives GotVMail People a chance to socialize. Since many people order lunch at the same time and pick it up in the same spot when it is delivered to GotVMail, it always turns into an opportunity to socialize and meet people from many different departments in the company. We've always felt strongly that GotVMail People need this sort of social release to be the productive.

Overall, the response has been extremely positive, and we're proud of the ripple effect it has had on team member morale and local businesses.

It's kind of unusual to have an epiphany while foraging for a snack. But that's what happened to me in GotVMail's kitchen one afternoon. After surveying the snacks--a smorgasbord of items that were either high in fat, sugar, preservatives or both--I realized it didn't have to be this way! I knew we could easily find healthier alternatives to greasy chips or provide protein bars instead of candy bars to GotVMail team members in need of something to snack on. The easiest way to do this? A vending machine, but not any old vending machine, it would be free for GotVMail team members and would consist entirely of healthier snacks.

Since I'd already been trying to find foods with fewer processed ingredients for myself at home, I was familiar with a lot of brands that offered healthier versions of favorite items like chips, popcorn, and candy bars. I decided to buy items like Cascadian Farms Organic, LesserEvil, Luna, and Robert's American Gourmet in large quantities on Amazon.com and stock the vending machine with those items and then see the response of GotVMail employees. Naturally, overhauling our snack offerings was a big change, but I had a feeling it would be a really positive change that would enhance our productivity. To make the new system easier to swallow, we decided to offer the healthier snacks in the machine for free, permanently. It just made more sense to supply our employees with snacks that could potentially provide the energy we all needed to get through our projects every day.

Since setting up the new, healthier vending machines, the response from GotVMail team members has been largely positive. Obviously, every now and again people just want a candy bar, and nothing else will substitute, but in terms of providing healthier alternatives to fill that daily, 3pm post-lunch void, the healthier vending machine has made a huge difference. And in addition to food in our vending machines, we continue to offer free drinks (the non-alcoholic kind!), coffee and espresso. Fresh fruit deliveries have also been added to the roster of healthier snack items at GotVMail.

The vending machine project at GotVMail launched around the same time as another initiative of ours, the GotVMail Lunch Program, GotLunch. Look for a post in the coming days about this innovative employee benefit.

Telling your employees to quit might be the best way to keep them (the good ones, anyway). At least that's the thinking behind Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's plan to pay any employee $1,000 to quit the company. Employees who can't contribute--for whatever reason--take the money and run.

It's definitely a splashy new story--CEO pays employees to quit!--but does Hsieh's plan work? It certainly could, but it requires companies large and small to have a few crucial elements in place before a plan like this should be implemented. In order for the plan to work, a company needs, at minimum:

1. A rich core values ideology that translates into an identifiable work culture. Hsieh decreases the chances of having too many employees that are a bad fit by screening them before they're hired, and then engaging in an extensive training period (during this time they are being paid as regular employees). "We interview people for culture fit," Hsieh stated in 2006. By having a strong identity and a training program, Zappos makes sure that anyone that doesn't share the same ideology is quickly weeded out.
2. Accountability. Business leaders can't just pay lip service to a certain philosophy of management--he or she has to make sure that the ideology of the company permeates the entire organization. This means holding under-performers accountable at every level, from entry level to senior staff.
3. Investment in employees. Hsieh's plan is meant to attract and keep only the best and most capable employees. Capable employees will leave if a job isn't what they signed up for. That's why in order to minimize turnover, a business needs to do one simple thing: make staying more attractive than leaving. Investing in an employees' future makes staying more worthwhile, especially for those who are especially talented because it allows them to build on previous skills, and learn new ones. Employee investment may come in the form of professional development offerings, or the type of personal investment discussed in books such as The Dream Manager, but it has to enter the picture somehow in order for a company to retain the best talent for as long as possible.

You can't overstate the importance of these three points, especially the one about core values and work culture. Zappos' culture is unique and forward-thinking (many of Zappos' employees post on social media sites such as Twitter), and it's what sets Zappos apart from their competitors in the shoe industry, as well as the job market.