What company has the most accessible channels & structure to reach senior management & there-for-our-employees behaviour that you know of? And why?

Whenever you assign them a task, break down the task into small chunks. Make the chunks as small as you can (within reason, and to the extent that your knowledge allows), and tell your devs that if any chunks seem large, that they should further break those chunks down into bite size pieces. For instance, for the overall task of making a new webpage, _you_ might break it down as follows: 1) Set up a database 2) Make a form that takes user email, name, and phone number and adds them to database 3) Have our site send an email to everyone above the age of 50 each week When your devs take a look at it, _they_ might further break down the third step into: A) Set up an email service B) Connect it to the client database C) Figure out how to query the database for certain users D) Have it send emails to users over 50 You can keep using Asana, or you could use something like Trello which might make more sense for a small company, and might be easier to understand and track by yourself. In Trello you'd set up 4 columns titled, "To Do", "Doing", "Ready for Review", "Approved" (or combine the last two into "Done") You might want to tell them to only have tasks in the "Doing" column if they/re actually sitting at their desk working on it. For instance: not to leave a task in "Doing" overnight after work. That way you can actually see what they're working on and how long it takes, but that might be overly micro-manager-y At the end of each day / week when you review the tasks completed, look for ones that took a longer time than average (since, on average, all the tasks should be broken down into sub-tasks of approximately the same difficulty). Ask them about those tasks and why they took longer to do. It may be because they neglected to further break it down into chunks as you had asked (in which case you ask them to do that next time), or it may be that some unexpected snag came up, or it may be a hard task that can't be further broken down. In any case, listen to their explanation and you should be able to tell if it sounds reasonable, and if it sounds fishy, google the problem they say they encountered. You'll be able to get a better feel of their work ethic and honesty by how they answer the question, without worrying as much about what their actual words are. Make sure that when you ask for more details about why a task took longer, you don't do it in a probing way. Make sure they understand that you're doing it for your own learning and to help predict and properly plan future timelines.

I am based in Canada and ended up opening a US bank account with Harris Bank in Chicago without physically visiting their office. This was about 4 years ago. So maybe contact them and see if they could help you.

I don't think it is what you are looking for, but MailChimp.com was created by mistake from a services agency. They were sending emails for their clients and the next thing you know, they were making most of their money from send costs and the rest is history. Sorry I can't be more help.

I am assuming your question is more pertaining to empowering and motivating (rather than hiring). I can outline some of the practices I have seen really result in high motivation and sense of ownership among engineering teams: * Empathize - Your engineering team will work well and be more motivated if they see you as one of them rather than a person who doesn't understand their function. Show your geeky side to them, and show that you understand their thought process and drivers. * Pick their brain on big and small decisions (roadmap, usability, whatever it is) - Product teams value being heard. The more you position yourself as someone who is WANTS to listen, is keen to have their inputs, you will be surprised at how involved they can get, and also how you can actually tap into a lot of smart ideas/thoughts from them that you can develop on. * Take care to explain - show how you arrive at decisions. Share your research, competitive analysis, and even your thought process on arriving at a feature set or list of things for a release. Its stuff you would have worked on anyway - so no harm sharing with more eyes! * Share customer feedback - nothing motivates your engineers than a positive interaction with a customer. Get them to see customer feedback. Have them sit in and observe some of the usability studies. (B2B - have them see you do some demos or do a successful sales pitch) * Send out interesting articles, insights, business and tech articles with your comments/highlights to them on a regular basis (maybe twice a week?) - maybe even some analysis you did on competition or customer feedback * Engineers like working with people they feel are competent and complement the work they are doing to build a great product. So make sure they see how everyone else around them is also doing a good job and adding value and contributing to the success of the product. * Be transparent about the product/business - Make them feel they are responsible and involved in the business, not just technology. I've seen engineering teams happy about their annual goals having components relating to making revenues, keeping customers happy, or reducing costs. If they are enthused about the business as a whole, they will be more motivated with their engineering efforts * Have a mix of little experiments, R&D, attending to engineering debt, in addition to bug fixes and new features that each engineer gets to spend some time on (based on their interest) * Finally get to know each of your engineers personally, and be aware of what their priorities are. Each of us has different motivations in life, so there is no silver bullet to motivate people. When they know you care for them, they are more motivated :).

There is a legendary example of this: Jack Dorsey being the CEO of both Twitter and Square simultaneously. Yes, it is possible to hold two jobs. It's even possible to be the CEO of two billion-dollar companies. It's far from easy, but it's possible with an extreme dose of discipline and time management. I heard Jack personally tell the story of how he managed his time at a fireside chat he did in New York. The closest I can get to an online article that talks about it is this: http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/13/technology/dorsey_techonomy/ Take a look at the way he splits the days of his week into themes. Each of his 6 working days has a purpose. Monday: Management meetings and "running the company" work Tuesday: Product development Wednesday: Marketing, communications and growth Thursday: Developers and partnerships Friday: The company and its culture Saturday: (no work) Sunday: Big picture strategy But he then goes next level and splits his time between two companies by alternating mornings and afternoons in each office. The article mentions him working 16 hour days – 8 hrs at each company – but when Jack told the story himself, he said he was splitting mornings and afternoons between the companies. Monday Morning = Twitter Monday Afternoon = Square Tuesday Morning = Square Tuesday Afternoon = Twitter Wednesday Morning = Twitter etc This might be an approach you can think of taking. It means you make it clear what your schedule is, when you will be working on different aspects of each job, and then be incredibly disciplined about sticking to the schedule so other people can accommodate and work with you.