No matter what kind of organization, inspiration leads to higher retention and just a better place to work. There are plenty of ways we can inspire teams and there are entire books on doing so. The traditional approaches involve identifying motivators, giving accolades, providing training, communicating more, doing what you say we’re going to do, identifying a focus on the purpose, defining the mission, and dozens of other techniques. Inspiring our teams keep people engaged, inspired, active, and create a great sense of community that is infectious to our customers. There are also demotivators. These negatively impact the team and can be off-putting. There are obvious behaviors that just don’t…

As we start to re-open offices and get back to normal (or find a new normal), there’s going to be a lot of new pressure applied here and there. Everyone in an early stage startup is already constantly busy. We bounce between so many different roles.  We have what seems like thousands of things going on in life and work. We have to get sales and marketing running. We have to get that new feature committed. We have to raise money to keep the lights on. We have to get a better process to merge code. We have to… Ugh. It just never ends. On top of that maybe we…