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This is a really important aspect of your human resources policy. You can get your staff to become so enthusiastic that they take on the vision for your project as if it were their own. They call this ‘signing up’ or ‘owning the project’. I expect someone with an MBA from Harvard or Boston came up with that little gem. For reference, read the book called ‘The soul of a new machine’. This was about a project to develop a radical new minicomputer and the deadlines were very tight. They needed the enthusiastic support of the staff to get the project done. Be warned however. If you do this again immediately on the next project, your staff will smell a rat. Quite rightly. Doing it once to get your company into the public eye and to be recognised as successful is excusable and it is in everyone’s interests. Doing it twice or more is not getting your staff to sign up, it is called exploitation and it is not at all justifiable. Plan and resource your projects better and you will not need to get your staff to work evenings and weekends. Carry on exploiting them and within 6 months they will be burned out and not at all willing to help out again when a genuine emergency arises. Get this one wrong and you are well on the way to making a very unhappy company. I saw a recent quotation along the lines of ‘the floggings will stop when morale improves’. Don’t let that be the style of company you run. Your staff will not stay long and your product quality will be shot down the sewer and everyone in the industry will know about it within 12 months.
Check out the whole list of Cliff's pithy tips for Web developers.
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