Viewed in McKinsey The McKinsey article provides valuable insights on how boards of directors can enhance their effectiveness and create a lasting positive impact on the organizations they govern. Often, boards are preoccupied with short-term performance, but to create sustainable value, they must focus on the organization’s long-term health and resilience. To increase their long-term… More
Read more...
Viewed in Bloomberg The article reports on a survey of 2,300 senior executives which found that almost half of their meetings were considered a waste of time. The executives suggested that meetings could be eliminated if they were not necessary or if the same information could be communicated via email or other means. Additionally, the… More
Read more...
Viewed in Inc. A Spy Agency taught agents 8 Techniques to sabotage business meetings 79 years ago. Regrettably, you will still encounter most of them in meetings, this explains how strategies used by spies in 1944 are still used in meetings today. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) provided training to… More
Read more...
Viewed in Fast Company Workplace perfectionists must break free from this trait and realize that perfectionism can be a time-sucking trait in the job. The challenge While striving for perfection can occasionally result in excellent work, it can also be a burden because it frequently causes one to focus too much on minute details and… More
Read more...
Viewed in The Wall Street Journal “The workplace is in the middle of an unusual collision between what bosses and workers want,” The Wall Street Journal reports. That is quite a statement, but the evidence to support it is compelling. Employees feeling empowered The result is that today’s workplace has many battleground traits with employees… More
Read more...
Viewed in The Wall Street Journal The TikTok generation has landed in the workforce, and their approach to work life and their careers is a marked break with that of preceding generations. Wall Street Journal reporter Lindsay Ellis addresses one of these dramatic changes after actually viewing some younger workers’ TikTok videos describing the newest… More
Read more...
Viewed in Korn Ferry Korn Ferry was and remains a giant in the world of executive recruitment and has gone on to establish its management consulting services with equal success, affording the company access to many of the world’s business thought leaders and executive management teams, all of whom offer insight on the challenges confronting… More
Read more...
Viewed in Fast Company While the pandemic lifts in most countries around the world and employees begin their return to work, or soon will, there appears to be a nearly universally-held view that what lies ahead for employees is a work life that takes on some of its pre-pandemic characteristics but is ultimately never quite… More
Read more...
Viewed in The Wall Street Journal At first, as the Internet and email communication were broadly implemented in the 1990s, we properly saw it as an extraordinary contribution to information sharing and efficiency. Email revolution The ability to craft an email and have one’s written message developed and transmitted immediately to the recipient was indeed… More
Read more...
Viewed in Harvard Business Review In the ongoing study and teaching of business management, so-called “soft skills” are receiving growing focus in recent years as companies seek to emphasize their importance and make up for the fact that they have been historically underestimated in both academic and organizational settings. Speak, present and listen Communications is… More
Read more...
Viewed in Inc. Perhaps you are one of those executives, managers, or employees who is aware you have one or more of the following four work traits perceived to be (at best) unconventional and (at worst) dysfunctional: Procrastination, indecisiveness, an preference for self-isolation, or a preference for starting your work day late and working into… More
Read more...
Viewed in Bloomberg BusinessWeek The 2020-21 global pandemic has inflicted almost unfathomable direct and indirect costs on the global economy that extend into trillions of dollars. And, on an individual basis, it has cost millions of jobs globally and inflicted less easily measured costs, such as increasing anxiety and depression diagnoses globally and escalating emotional strains… More
Read more...
Viewed in BCG Boston Consulting Group (BCG), currently the world’s second largest management consulting firm, takes a close look at the ongoing challenge of inclusiveness in work environments in this survey and accompanying article, and it includes some good news: In an age where a sense of inclusiveness is important among employees, the firm’s October… More
Read more...
Viewed in EgonZehnder Before 1990, the phrase “psychological safety” did not exist in business phraseology. Defining psychological safety In this EgonZehnder article the authors draw its definition from a book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, by business strategist Timothy R. Clark, who defined it as “a condition in which human beings feel included, safe… More
Read more...
Viewed in McKinsey & Company We most definitely are in era where the idea of “reimagining things” has gained hold. Reimagining That includes, as this report by management consultant giant McKinsey contends, the way we work. There is, as McKinsey documents, historical precedent for these evolutions of this nature. “In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution… More
Read more...
Viewed in Fast Company A voluminous number of studies have established fairly definitively that there is a clear correlation between an employee’s social skills and their success on the job, despite the fact that employees’ underdeveloped social skills continue to challenge many companies. There is, of course, the instinctual feel regarding an employee’s skills in… More
Read more...
Viewed in Fast Company The pandemic has proven immensely tumultuous to the traditional work environment, leading that environment to often be anything but traditional as we begin 2021. The biggest change is the vast emergence of work from home trends and the associated challenges of keeping businesses moving with employees decentralized and facing the new… More
Read more...
Viewed in Fast Company If there has been one profoundly altering impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global business, it has been the closure of many physical offices globally and the ascent of remote work. Surveys conducted by FlexJobs in 2020 tell the story. In February 2020, 4.7 million Americans (3.4 percent of the population)… More
Read more...
Viewed in The Wall Street Journal. We live in anxious times, and perhaps the biggest contributing factor to this anxiety is our work lives. The American Psychological Association (APA), in 2017, found exactly this when they set out to identify the sources of anxiety. An APA survey found that 61 percent of respondents identified work… More
Read more...
(Despite Trying Really Hard) Viewed in Inc. Despite the best of intentions, most people struggle with productivity. But what can be done to overcome this? Inc. contributor Matt Plummer identifies four not so obvious and even counter intuitive solutions: First, think in terms of high “present value.” This means that investing time up front to… More
Read more...