Tag: Office Culture

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News You Can Use: 2/1/2017

  • Is 2017 The Year Of Flat Headcount?

    As budgets are settling down and getting approved for many of the companies I’m on the board of, I’m seeing a general trend of much less headcount growth in 2017 than in 2016. In some cases, companies got ahead of themselves. In others, they need to integrate all the people they’ve added. In some, they feel like they have a critical mass of people and want to march to get profitable on current headcount. And still others are profitable and have realized significant operating leverage in the past two quarters that they want to continue.

    http://www.feld.com/archives/2017/01/2017-year-flat-headcount.html

  • Google Co-Founder: Take Chances, Pursue Your Dreams and Silence the Voices

    Brin encourages experimentation and innovation, just as one of his professors did when he wanted to leave Stanford to launch Google. But his career has taught him that the future is impossible to predict. He is cautious in his forecasts.

    “The evolution of technology might be inherently chaotic,” he said. “We have a set of values and desires today that are probably pretty different than before the Industrial Revolution, and different still than before the Agrarian Revolution. And we might continue to evolve.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288046

  • This is pretty much how it goes in procurement:
  • In a tech-saturated world, customer feedback is everything

    Executives and product teams shouldn’t wait until a product breaks to hear from their customers. My team, for example, recently executed a high-stakes redesign and overhaul of our central product. While we always strive to incorporate customer feedback and interaction into our day-to-day work, we worked with around 16,000 customers to receive feedback on different versions of our new product. Our entire process was oriented around continuous customer feedback — and it transformed the way we do business. We now collaborate with 11,000 customers who give us a constant look at how our product helps them solve the challenges they face in their day-to-day lives.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/20/in-a-tech-saturated-world-customer-feedback-is-everything/?ncid=rss

  • Why your “career path” won’t lead to your dream job

    You may wonder, then, what’s the point of setting goals, working hard, and ending up somewhere you never intended to be? How can you make progress if you continually break course? How can you be successful if you can’t even follow a straight line?

    Here’s the thing: The more activities you participate in, the more people you meet, the more opportunities you grab hold of, the more likely you are to find something amazing along the way—regardless of (or maybe especially if), your path is quite windy. In the words of the inimitable Oprah Winfrey, “Luck is preparation meeting opportunity.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3067259/hit-the-ground-running/why-your-career-path-probably-wont-lead-you-to-your-dream-job

Photo: Ales Krivec

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News You Can Use: 1/25/2017

  • Why You Should Recognize Luck’s Role in Your Success or Failure

    Recognizing luck also helps with empathy. When you over-credit hard work and throw the role of luck out the window, it’s easy to assume everyone else should be able to accomplish the same things you can. When you recognize the role of luck, however, you keep your ego in check, which makes it easier to look at things more objectively and with less judgment.

    http://twocents.lifehacker.com/why-you-should-recognize-luck-s-role-in-your-success-or-1791093753

  • Would You Want the “Right to Disconnect” from Work?

    …“All the studies show there is far more work-related stress today than there used to be, and that the stress is constant,” MP Benoit Hamon told the BBC. “Employees physically leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash — like a dog. The texts, the messages, the emails — they colonize the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down.”

    http://lifehacker.com/would-you-want-the-right-to-disconnect-from-work-1790830015

  • How to Say ‘No’ at Work (Infographic)

    Too often, people burn themselves out by agreeing to take on more tasks than they can handle. However, overloading yourself with work can reduce the quality of what you produce. If you’re too busy, you may also miss deadlines. In those cases, the person you’re working for likely would have preferred that you had just said “no” from the start.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/287746

    Photo: The Business Backer
    Coming out of college almost 20 years ago, I entered a work force that told me to “NEVER SAY NO”. Early in my career that was a major source of burnout. However, in the last 5 years, saying yes gave me opportunities and access to projects that were good for both experience and my career politically.

  • The Purpose of a Supply Chain Manager: The End Customer Experience

     The journey to understand that focus tells you what your business model really depends on. Too many companies don’t understand what customers really value and as a consequence spend a lot to develop low-value innovation, such as car manufacturers loading their cars with more features that customers don’t use – a phenomenon known as marketing myopia.

    http://www.scmr.com/article/the_purpose_of_a_supply_chain_manager_the_end_customer_experience

  • Bonus: Americans at Work: Philadelphia’s Municipal Offices

    While photographing in these spaces what stuck out most visually was the physical evidence of decades past, not only in the space’s aesthetics and architecture but in the office equipment itself. An employee can find themselves sitting at mid century desk working on a 21st century computer while referencing a ledger book from 1887. Philadelphia City Hall is like a time capsule no one is quite ready to put the lid on. Over time, as Philadelphia grew, more municipal offices have been built to accommodate the needs of the city. One of these offices—Philadelphia’s Municipal Services Building—is a more modern office building, something office workers of today would be more familiar with.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/01/americans-at-work-philadelphias-municipal-offices/513209/?utm_source=feed

Photo: JoshWillink

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News You Can Use: 1/11/2017

Photo: Denys Nevozhai

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News You Can Use: 11/16/2016

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  • Workaholism Is the Threat That Masquerades as Dedication

    The difference between working 40 hours per week and working, say 55 or more, shows up in the quality of the work. In the ‘80s, the Whitehall II study in Great Britain highlighted a drop in cognitive function for those working longer schedules. Teams that spend more hours at their desks but get progressively less effective aren’t benefiting the business.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/282134

  • The working life is changing fast, companies need to catch up

    Explaining that work “doesn’t really work today”, Katherine von Jan, MD of strategic innovation at Salesforce, highlighted the better experience that customers have over workers as a hint that things aren’t right.

    The customer experience is at an all-time high, with ease of service from ordering to delivery of products and services – meaning our expectations are probably too high when we get into the office.

    https://www.siliconrepublic.com/video/salesforce-future-of-work-inspirefest

    The message is really good, but this poor woman is so awkward…

  • What It’s Like When a Coworker Tells You to Smile

    It seems that when I walked about the campus, I had failed to smile at the people who would determine my status as faculty or reject. It also turned out that I did not dress appropriately; interrupted men when they were talking even if they paused for breath and it seemed to me they were done rambling on and on; spoke out about controversial issues like presidential campaigns, civil rights, lack of diversity in both employees and courses; and a host of other things I did that identified me as a “left-wing feminist.” I knew I had an EEOC case when the female faculty member assigned to be my “mentor” explained to me that “you have to dress to please the men” in order to get tenure.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/10/what-its-like-when-a-coworker-tells-you-to-smile/505493/?utm_source=feed

  • Robots and AI won’t cost you your job anytime soon

    Robots function a lot like reptile brains. Technology hasn’t come far enough in biomimicry to create the right movements, expressions and thought patterns to bring AI to where it can work alone. Current AI technology, whether it’s an actual robot or just software, almost always need a human guide. At best, robots are relegated to one specific task that they can repeat multiple times.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3136563/emerging-technology/robots-and-ai-wont-cost-you-your-job-anytime-soon.html

  • Why Do Millennials Hate Groceries?

    Economists have found the same shift toward restaurant dining and away from old-fashioned grocers. Using Census data, the economist Mark J. Perry calculated that for the first time on record, Americans are spending more money at restaurants and bars than at grocery stores.

    Also:

    But today’s shoppers are springing for options in a market that supermarkets once monopolized. Modern shoppers divide their shopping among superstores like Walmart, supermarkets like Giant, specialty shops for bread and coffee, and online shopping for all of the above. It is what industry analysts are calling “grocery channel fragmentation,” and nothing in this retail sector is growing faster than than the low-end. In a reflection of the slow recovery, dollar and convenience stores accounted four in five new food retailers that opened since 2013.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/millennials-groceries/506180/?utm_source=feed

Photo: Karsten Würth

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News You Can Use: 10/12/2016

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  • Is Job Hopping Really Just A Basic Human Need?

    The idea that you learn quickly at the beginning and your progress slows later on is what we call the learning curve, and it’s real. It’s also motivating at first; it feels great to know that your skills are growing so fast that you can see a difference from week to week. It can be much more frustrating to be stuck in a rut later on, feeling like you’re making incremental gains at best.

    One thing that job switching provides is lots of opportunities to pull yourself up the steep part of the learning curve. It can actually be addicting to continually place yourself in situations that force you to rise to new challenges. You might like that experience so much that you find yourself job hopping over and over again as a result.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3063817/is-job-hopping-really-just-a-basic-human-need

  • Here’s what makes IBM, McKinsey, and 12 other big companies some of the best places for moms to work

    Working Mother magazine just identified the 100 best companies for working moms to honor those organizations that are setting the standard for work-life practices in the US.

    To compile the list, which is now in its 31st year, Working Mother surveyed hundreds of companies with more than 400 questions about their paid time off and leave policies, workforce profile, benefits, women’s issues and advancement, flexibility policies, and company culture, among other things.

    http://nordic.businessinsider.com/best-companies-for-working-moms-2016-9/
    I actually wrote an article about IBM’s pro-mother position over at BabyCenter:
    http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/03072016-would-you-take-your-baby-to-work/

  • How to pull workers back from the brink of burnout

    Unfortunately, simply working longer hours doesn’t lead to better work. As CNBC recently reported, a Stanford University study found that employee productivity falls off a cliff after 55 hours per week. After 20 years of working in Silicon Valley, I understand that this can be hard to accept. I didn’t accept it myself until recently, when, for the first time in my career, I took a position where I am not expected to be always-on. In fact, I’m encouraged to be off, and I’ve never been more productive. But I struggled with the shift. I pushed back hard. It took time for me to assimilate to this “new normal.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/25/how-to-pull-workers-back-from-the-brink-of-burnout/?ncid=rss
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  • How organizations enshrine collective stupidity and employees are rewarded for checking their brains at the office door (thanks for the suggestion KS)

    At least $14 billion gets spent every year on leadership development in the US alone yet, according to researchers such as Jeffrey Pfeffer at Stanford, it has virtually no impact on improving the quality of leaders. In our own research, we found that most employees in knowledge-intensive firms didn’t need much leadership. People working at the coalface were self-motivated and often knew their jobs much better than their bosses did. Their superiors’ cack-handed attempts to be leaders were often seen as a pointless distraction from the real work. George, a manager in a high-tech engineering firm, told us he saw himself as a very ‘open’. When we asked his subordinates what he actually did, they told us that he provides breakfast in the morning and runs an annual beer-tasting.

    https://aeon.co/essays/you-don-t-have-to-be-stupid-to-work-here-but-it-helps?preview=true
    While this article had me shaking my head in agreement a few times, it is lacking in actual facts to back up the perception. But an excellent rant none the less.

  • Reality check: Philly’s cloud ambitions grind to a halt after transition

    Outdated and overly complex IT procurement processes also impact the city’s ability to transform. Rather than trying to outline every possible requirement to squeeze into one enormous procurement for a completely new system, the city should look to more agile development, like its FastFWD program. FastFWD focused on problem-based procurement and tested applicability and feasibility before moving to wide-spread enterprise procurement. Finding more flexible funding options is the key for moving towards more flexible development and deployment models. Tech companies can be advocates for agile development and procurement by being realistic in their proposed solutions with measurable and attainable goals and timelines.

    http://statescoop.com/reality-check-phillys-cloud-ambitions-grind-to-a-halt-after-transition
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Photo: Noah Siliman