Archive for Management
by Celine Roque
October 6, 2009 at 9:06 am · Filed under
Management, productivity
Beeping, ringing, flashing – it seems our tech tools distract us at every opportunity (or rather, we let them distract us). David McCandless attempted to find a method to the madness by observing how each of them capture his attention, and sorting them according to his priorities. That is, assuming they all occur simultaneously, which ones will he be more likely to attend to? The results were presented in a triangular graphic on his blog which he called The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions.
He noticed that receiving messages from Facebook and other social networking sites would quickly make him stop working just to read them. However, if he gets a Skype or landline call, Facebook takes a backseat. In the middle of a call, Twitter messages, important emails (mass redundancies?), and text messages were likely divert his attention. If anything is happening on his iPhone, he can’t stop himself from checking it. Of course, all these grind to a screeching halt when any of his devices fail, consuming most of his energies trying to fix it.
Not everyone will behave in the same way. For some, their guilty pleasures are Youtube, Wikipedia, RSS, StumbleUpon, or Digg. Others are hooked on their portable media players or gaming consoles (I’ve seen many bring theirs to the office). Whatever your favorite distractions are, if you’re serious about taming them, being aware of how they affect you is paramount. Someone pointed out the difference between urgent vs important. Time-sensitive tasks like answering a phone call is urgent, but it’s not always important. If you have caller ID, you can check who’s calling at a glance and return to work if it’s not anyone you know (or someone you’re avoiding). The trick is to stay calm when the beeps and rings start. Stand by your real priorities.
Managers deal with distracted employees everyday. Studying why some things are more distracting than others could give them an insight to what can be done to minimize their effects and increase office productivity.
by Patti Anklam
September 1, 2009 at 2:24 pm · Filed under
Culture, Learning, Management, social media
Today’s juxtaposition:
Fish (@nytimesfish) argues for the importance of teaching English composition as a vital requirement for success in any profession. Happe is thinking that it’s hard to fill senior positions because many people who are skilled in social media lack experience navigating large organizations.
One of the questions these both raise for me is the effect of social media practices on our ability to think and communicate, and especially the need to be able to construct models of thought. Dr. Fish provides a wonderful example of how he teaches the “neither/nor” construct, not as a “rule,” but as an experience of learning the pattern. Similarly, I think that the ability to navigate large organizations comes from time spent experiencing the territory.
What is the experience, what are the learning patterns being developed as laptop-toting students express themselves using shorthand? Yes, they (and we who tweet, blog, and befriend) are learning to cope with fragments and put those pieces together. Yes, I believe that the primarly new skill of management is the ability to manage complex sets of interactions and set up boundaries and spaces for possibility to emerge. And yes, I know that the trajectory of my own career experience is based fundamentally on my ability to write.
by Jim Ware
August 21, 2009 at 12:38 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Management, Work Design
Here’s some new evidence about how cube farms destroy creativity and collaboration – or at least don’t encourage or enable productive work.
Harvard Business Review online has just published a provocative short piece by Laura Sherbin and Karen Sumberg called “Bulldoze Your Cubicles for Better Collaboration.”
The idea really isn’t new, and the data isn’t that surprising, but it’s nice to see the recognition growing that cubicles don’t work – or produce good work by their “inhabitants.”
Here’s one brief excerpt:
Companies are finally realizing what their employees have known for ages: Cubicle cultures just don’t work. With concerns about knowledge-sharing among older and younger generations of employees skyrocketing, organizations are concluding that impersonal “cube farms” discourage collaboration, stifle employee engagement and, as a result, strangle innovation at the exact time when it’s desperately needed.
Perhaps the most important idea in the article, however, is something I’ve long believed: Baby Boomer and Millennials/Gen Y have more in common than most people think–especially when it comes to how they view the workplace:
“Bookend Generations,” a study of how Baby Boomers and Generation Y view work, found that both Boomers and Gen Ys prize interacting with high-quality colleagues—so much so that both generations rank it equal to or higher than financial compensation. Far from glaring at each other across the generation gap, 58% of Boomers say they enjoy helping Gen Ys navigate the workplace and the same number of Ys report that they look to Boomers for professional advice more than any other generation.
The Bookend Generations report is available (for a fee) from the Center for Work-Life Policy.
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by Jim Ware
August 10, 2009 at 7:54 am · Filed under
Management, Talent Management, Tips for Tough Times, Work Design
Just found a good article in The Futurist about the future of the job market. In the current economy we’re all concerned about creating enough jobs to get back to something resembling full employment. But given the demographics of the work force, employers who think long term may have a very different challenge ahead of them.
This isn’t new news, but it serves as important reminder of how critical demographics is to thinking about the future.
This comment is from an article by Patrick Tucker in Examiner.com:
The newest issue of THE FUTURIST magazine features writing from career and labor experts John Challenger and Edward Gordon. The picture they paint of the future of work may prove surprising for a number of readers. For instance, despite the presence of millions of people out of work, a shortage of skilled labor could have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy in the decade ahead, according to Gordon.
The full article in The Futurist is available only to paid subscribers, but it can be downloaded as a pdf file for a one-time fee of $3.00. The essential message is simple: as the Boomers retire, there is likely to be a huge shortage of talent in the United States (and no doubt in other countries as well).
As an employer, you should start doing something about it now, while the current slowdown gives you a bit of a break. As an individual, do some soul-searching about what kind of job you want to be in five to ten years from now, and get started on the research and training you’ll need to have.
by Jim Ware
June 16, 2009 at 10:45 am · Filed under
Communities, Culture, Distributed Work, Management, Tips for Tough Times, Webinar, Work Design, social networks
Please join me and my partner in crime Charlie Grantham, along with Eric Bensley of Citrix Online, and James Hilliard of BNet next Wednesday, June 24, for a free one-hour webinar called “Keeping Your Team Connected in a Distributed Workplace.”
The webinar is sponsored by Citrix Online We’re very grateful for their continuing support of our research and ideas.
Again, the webinar will be on June 24, at 11 AM Pacific/2 PM Eastern. Register here.
We hope you’ll join us. We’re going to be talking mostly about the leadership and interpersonal principles for keeping members of a distributed team connected with each other, their tasks, and the company.
by Jenny Ambrozek
June 3, 2009 at 5:23 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Management, Web 2.0, government 2.0, productivity, social media
While Jim Ware’s recent post reminded us about Keeping Technology in Perspective listening to long term venture capitalist Fred Wilson speaking at Google about “Disruption” indicates technology change will continue, demanding that we as individuals, organizations and industries adapt.
Wilson’s Union Square Ventures current investments include Tumblr, Feedburner, Boxee, Twitter and Etsy. He blogs at www.avc.com and sought feedback on his Google talk before delivering.
Fred Wilson’s “Disruption Talk” begins with the media industry, the changes to which we’ve all watched and experienced as online and empowered individuals have emerged as driving forces and taken power from large institutions.
He proceeds to outline the industries seen as targets for future “disruption”: Consumer Finance, Education, Energy, Health Care and Government.
The presentation is an hour but recommended viewing if you are interested in what’s next.
How does your view of what’s ahead in technology and the industries to be “disrupted” jibe with Fred Wilson’s? Please share your reactions.
by Shiv Singh
May 25, 2009 at 11:22 pm · Filed under
Change Management, Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Culture, Management, Web 2.0, social media, social networks, social tools
At the Razorfish 9th Annual Client Summit, I presented five big ideas for social influence marketing. These were ideas that I felt would matter in the next two years. The audience for the presentation was 600 senior marketers but the ideas I emphasized have relevance to all decision makers within an organization. Here’s the presentation with the five ideas. Let me know what you think.
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