How distributed teams can optimize collaboration and connection

How distributed teams can optimize collaboration and connection

March 13, 2020

Shaping the future of work is as much about studying the way real people connect and collaborate today as it is about imagining the new tools we’ll be using tomorrow, especially for those who are members of distributed teams.

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What’s Your Company’s Emergency Remote-Work Plan?

What’s Your Company’s Emergency Remote-Work Plan?

March 06, 2020

At the end of February, early March 2020, the coronavirus (or Covid-19) took a more serious turn in Korea, Italy, Spain, UK and the U.S. with warnings that it could very well impact how, when, and where we work.

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How To Develop Soft Skills

How To Develop Soft Skills

February 28, 2020

As automation and artificial intelligence dramatically change the nature of work, employees must fine-tune the social and emotional abilities machines cannot master. To encourage this behaviour, employers must adjust the ways they assess, educate, train and reward their workforce on soft skills such as collaboration, communication and critical thinking.

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Does Your Team Have an Accountability Problem?

Does Your Team Have an Accountability Problem?

February 14, 2020

“We need to hold people more accountable.” How many times have you said this in the past year? When things aren’t going well — maybe your numbers are down, you haven’t met your goals, or your pipeline is dry — it’s easy to turn to this familiar mantra. But when you say it...

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Create a Productivity Workflow That Works for You

Create a Productivity Workflow That Works for You

February 07, 2020

In the past fifteen years, I’ve tried scores of task managers like Todoist and Wunderlist, a couple dozen project management platforms like Asana and Basecamp, and hundreds of other productivity apps that promise to make better use of my time or enhance collaboration with my colleagues or my team. 

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Being a good communicator is more important than ever. Here's why

Being a good communicator is more important than ever. Here's why

January 31, 2020

Great persuaders are irresistible throughout all of history. But at no time in our historical record have interpersonal communication skills been as important as they are today, which is somewhat counterintuitive because today, anyone, anywhere in the world who is better at expressing their ideas can see a sudden massive increase in wealth that is unprecedented in human history.

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Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

January 24, 2020

The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource. Energy is a different story. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and ...

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How to nudge your way to better performance

How to nudge your way to better performance

January 17, 2020

People face so many pitfalls on their path to making reasonable decisions—whether they’re a consumer making a purchase or an employee meeting performance goals—how do you make it more likely that they’ll land on the most beneficial decision for them and for your organisation? 

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Changing mindsets and behaviour, one “nudge” at a time

Changing mindsets and behaviour, one “nudge” at a time

January 10, 2020

Our understanding of the unconscious mind has come a long way since Sigmund Freud, grounded in decades of research into what drives ordinary, everyday human behaviour. Today’s behavioural scientists like to say that we are predictably irrational. And what can be predicted can be managed, at least to some degree.

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How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits

How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits

January 03, 2020

Breaking habits is hard. We all know this, whether we’ve failed our latest diet (again), or felt the pull to refresh our Instagram feed instead of making progress on a work project that is past due.

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How to Manage Your Emotions Without Fighting Them

How to Manage Your Emotions Without Fighting Them

December 27, 2019

We often hear tips and tricks for helping us to “control” our emotions, but that’s the wrong idea: strong emotions aren’t bad, and they don’t need to be pushed down or controlled; they are, in fact, data. 

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Holidays Can Be Stressful. They Don’t Have to Stress Out Your Team.

Holidays Can Be Stressful. They Don’t Have to Stress Out Your Team.

December 20, 2019

The festive spirit is everywhere during the holiday season. For some, each day feels like waking up to a holiday song — “children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile.” But, for others, it can be the loneliest and most stressful time of the year.

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How small shifts in leadership can transform your team dynamic

How small shifts in leadership can transform your team dynamic

December 13, 2019

Once upon a time, saying “the soft stuff is the hard stuff” was a snappy challenge to business convention. Now, it’s a cliché. Everyone knows that it’s not easy to suddenly make your colleagues more creative, adaptable, or collaborative, however well-intentioned you may be.

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Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together

Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together

December 06, 2019

Why are so many meetings so unproductive?

Many professionals, fed up with calendars chock-full of long, disorganised, soul-bruising sessions, resort to uncharitable, even cynical explanations

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Social Media’s Productivity Payoff

Social Media’s Productivity Payoff

November 29, 2019

Social technologies are not just giant time sinks that keep your employees from getting their work done. On the contrary, they may become the most powerful tools yet developed to raise the productivity of high-skill knowledge workers.

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To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold?

To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold?

November 22, 2019

As a leader, you’re going to face conflict. It comes with the territory. But before you try to deal with a conflict, you first need to stop and ask yourself the following question:

Is it hot or cold?

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5 Mental Mistakes That Kill Your Productivity

5 Mental Mistakes That Kill Your Productivity

November 15, 2019

If you’re sometimes frustrated about how little you accomplish during your workday, you’re not alone. Research indicates that only 26% of people often leave the office having accomplished the tasks they set out to do. 

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Mapping the value of employee collaboration

Mapping the value of employee collaboration

November 08, 2019

Although collaboration is at the heart of modern business processes, most companies are still in the dark about how to manage it. Linear, process-based tools such as activity-based costing, business process reengineering, and total quality management have long been effective at measuring and improving the efficiency of people and organisations in accomplishing individual tasks. But ...

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Why Are We Here?

Why Are We Here?

November 01, 2019

Over the past decade, “purpose” has become a management watchword. Since 2010 it has appeared in the titles of more than 400 new business and leadership books and thousands of articles. And no wonder: Many people—not just Millennials—want to work for organisations whose missions and business philosophies resonate with them intellectually and emotionally.

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The Executive’s Guide To Better Listening

The Executive’s Guide To Better Listening

October 25, 2019

Good listeners tend to make better decisions, based on better-informed judgments, than ordinary or poor listeners do—and hence tend to be better leaders. By showing respect to our conversation partners, remaining quiet so they can speak, and actively opening ourselves up to facts that undermine our beliefs, we can all better cultivate this valuable skill.

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How to Actually Start the Task You’ve Been Avoiding

How to Actually Start the Task You’ve Been Avoiding

October 18, 2019

The biggest challenge to moving forward on anything is the transition to working on it. It almost always represents a shift from doing something comfortable to doing something uncomfortable.

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Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology

Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology

October 11, 2019

A recent survey of directors, CEOs, and senior executives found that digital transformation (DT) risk is their #1 concern in 2019. Yet 70% of all DT initiatives do not reach their goals. Of the $1.3 trillion that was spent on DT last year, it was estimated that $900 billion went to waste. Why do some DT efforts succeed and others fail?

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7 Questions to Ask Before Your Next Digital Transformation

7 Questions to Ask Before Your Next Digital Transformation

October 04, 2019

Although digital investment is almost unquestionably the right course of action for most firms, organisations still struggle to create the desired results. Estimates of digital transformation failures range from 66% to 84%. Such a high failure rate isn’t surprising, as leaders are trying to create entirely new competencies and wedge them into an organisation with strong legacy cultures and operating models.

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Agility: mindset makeovers are critical

Agility: mindset makeovers are critical

September 27, 2019

In today's dynamic markets, leaders need very different mindsets from those used to manage traditional organisations in less-demanding times. We find that three primary mindset shifts are required to lead agile organisations designed for innovation, collaboration and value creation.

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To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To

To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To

September 20, 2019

One of the best insights on what true productivity means in the 21st century dates back to 1890. In his book The Principles of Psychology, Vol.1, William James wrote a simple statement that’s packed with meaning: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

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Collaborative leadership: moving from top-down to team-centric

Collaborative leadership: moving from top-down to team-centric

September 06, 2019

As business landscapes become increasingly networked and distributed, more companies are ditching hierarchical leadership models in favour of collaborative leadership approaches. In fact, 51% of respondents in a 2018 Deloitte survey rated “C-suite collaboration” as very important.

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Protecting Company Culture Means Having Rules for Email

Protecting Company Culture Means Having Rules for Email

August 30, 2019

A study out of Virginia Tech University confirms something that just about every knowledge worker already knows: Dealing with after-hours emails produces anxiety which is damaging not only to the worker but to their family, too.

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Preparing millennials for the age of automation

Preparing millennials for the age of automation

August 23, 2019

lip-reading system, more proficient than a professional human lip-reader. An artificial intelligence (AI) system that can diagnose pneumonia from chest X-rays better than expert radiologists. These are just two real examples of how machine intelligence seems primed to substitute work activities that currently only humans can do...

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What is learning-in-the-flow-of-work?

What is learning-in-the-flow-of-work?

August 16, 2019

As automation, AI, and new job models reconfigure the business world, lifelong learning has become accepted as an economic imperative. Eighty percent of CEOs now believe the need for new skills is their biggest business challenge.

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5 tips to Help Employees Navigate Digital Transformation

5 tips to Help Employees Navigate Digital Transformation

August 09, 2019

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) landscape has been going through a significant shake-up. Coca-Cola reshuffled its leadership team to focus on growth, innovation, and digital. Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club, a young startup, for $1 billion in a move to introduce a new...

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Does Your Team R.O.C.K. ?

Does Your Team R.O.C.K. ?

August 02, 2019

To learn about teamwork, management gurus tend to study collaboration in companies. Most don’t consider rock ‘n’ roll groups as an appropriate venue for studying teams. After all, what is a life in rock ‘n’ roll, if not a quest to escape the 9-to-5?

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5 inbox habits to help eliminate email overload and gain an extra 1hr 21min a day

5 inbox habits to help eliminate email overload and gain an extra 1hr 21min a day

July 26, 2019

The average professional spends 28% of the workday reading and answering email, according to a McKinsey analysis. For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent and 120 messages received per day.

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Persuasion: A 5 step formula thats worked for over 2000 years

Persuasion: A 5 step formula thats worked for over 2000 years

July 19, 2019

Ideas are the currency of the twenty-first century. The ability to persuade, to change hearts and minds, is perhaps the single greatest skill that will give you a competitive edge in the knowledge economy — an age where ideas matter more than ever.

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The Puzzle Of Productivity

The Puzzle Of Productivity

July 12, 2019

Nine years into recovery from the Great Recession, labour-productivity-growth rates remain near historic lows across many advanced economies. Productivity growth is crucial to increase wages and living standards and helps raise the purchasing power of consumers to grow demand for goods and services.

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Persuasive Public Speaking is as Simple as Breathing

Persuasive Public Speaking is as Simple as Breathing

July 05, 2019

Have you ever wondered why two people can say exactly the same thing in a meeting, but only one of them gets credit for it? Many times it’s the way we sound that makes the difference between whether or not we are actually heard.

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Are You An Agile Manager?

Are You An Agile Manager?

June 28, 2019

The agile workplace is becoming increasingly common. The shift is driven by proof that small, multidisciplinary teams of agile organisations can respond swiftly and promptly to rapidly changing market opportunities and customer demands. Indeed, more than 80 per cent of respondents in agile units report that overall performance increased moderately or significantly since their transformations began.

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