Changing an organization’s culture is considered one of the most difficult challenges for leaders, and those with experience will confirm that it can be a massive undertaking. Whatever challenges the organization is facing — low morale among staff, bad behavior…
Culture
Here’s a 4-Step Recovery Plan for Meeting Addiction
We have a love-hate relationship with meetings. Most of us want to get rid of them — they drive frustration and waste our time. However, when we don’t invite someone to a meeting, that person feels left out. Sounds familiar?…
No One Works There Because You Have a Foosball Table
Ping-pong tables, nap-pods, endless snacks and beer on tap are the hallmark perks of trendy start-ups, tech companies and creative agencies, but what value do they really hold? Sure, they rank high on the cool meter, but how tangible are…
How Productivity Analytics Tools Are Making a Difference
Imagine my surprise when I started receiving emails from Microsoft last summer that included descriptions of my Office 365 activity, like how much time I spent multitasking in meetings, who is my “top collaborator,” how much “focus time” I had,…
7 Culture Insights for Positive Change and 3 Reasons Change Fails
This post is a salute to passionate and experienced culture and performance change agents. You understand the power of culture in organizations and the challenge, frustration, restlessness, and exhilaration inevitably linked to intentional culture-related action. We’re living in the absolute…
Overcome Your High Performer Bias to Improve Your Whole Team
Everyone loves high performers — hot shots who deliver exceptional work on a regular basis are unique. However, there’s a problem I frequently observe when facilitating team offsites and workshops. Our obsession with top performers can backfire. Managers’ quest for…
The Good, the Bad and the Not-So-Ugly Reality of Group Chat in the Workplace
Email may be the veteran of communication in the workplace, but rookie platforms for instantaneous group chat, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, have changed how employees correspond at work. Digitally-savvy workers of all ages have started replacing email with…
How to Overcome 5 of the Worst Hits to Productivity
Productivity at its most basic, signifies the rate of output per unit of input. The phrase echoes an era where people were seen as elements in a production line, measured by the amount of time it would take them to…
Five Things You Can Expect of Generation Z
“Generation Z only knows a world that is hyper-connected, where by the tap of a smartphone, a pair of shoes can be delivered to their doorstep via Uber or a drone in less than an hour. To Generation Z, a phone will…
What Your Suitcase Says About How You Manage Time
You can tell a lot about people based on how they manage their time. The ones who are notoriously late are the same people who are consistently a dollar short. They possess neither a mastery of time nor money. Oftentimes,…
Changing Culture Starts With Changing Behavior
A man and his wife entered a deli together late one afternoon. They were the only customers in the place. “May I help you?” asks the server behind the counter. Before either can reply, the other person behind the deli counter,…
Design of Work Experience: A Different Way of Customizing the Culture
You may be thinking, “Another culture model? Who needs another tool?” Given all that’s out there, the skepticism is well-founded. This one, however, fills a much-needed gap when it comes to culture-building. Design of Work Experience (DOWE) is a concept,…
Encourage the Quiet to Give Voice to the Sounds of Silence
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? That’s a tricky question. I have a hard time answering it myself. That’s the problem of binary questions — you are forced to choose one or the other. Being quiet is a choice…
How to Avoid These 3 Culture Change Pitfalls
Culture change is a human experience. It’s not just a business imperative, as it has been viewed for decades, as reflected in these expressions: “If we’re going to grow, we have to change the culture” and “This culture is toxic,…
Do Your Subcultures Align Or Undermine Your Company Values?
It can be surprising when you first see the signs of an organizational subculture forming When the company is small, employees are much closer to the central embodiment of its mission, vision, and values, because everyone is working closely together….
Hire For a Mission, Not a Job
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in the event of success.” Legend has it that Sir Ernest Shackleton used the copy above in an ad to recruit his…
Build a More Engaged Workforce These 4 Ways
Companies are becoming increasingly concerned with the internal culture of their company these days – and for good reason. Gallup has famously studied and reported on the American workplace reporting that the level of engagement among employees has a huge…
Creativity Thrives When People Move
Feeling uninspired and need a jolt of creativity? Brace yourself. I recently read about a development that’s fascinating … and maybe a little freaky. Researchers found a way to stimulate the area of the brain responsible for creative thought. It turns out…
Do Your Values Just Hang On a Wall?
“I suggest you take another look at your core values as they are not being delivered.” The words were uttered at an exit review by an employee on his way out. This story was told to me by a retail…
The Secret to Productivity May Be Air Conditioning
Call them dinosaur-brains or Neanderthals, there are people in every business who live to make us miserable. They aren’t necessarily actively toxic, but some are so rude, bureaucratic, and/or annoying, your automatic response may be to disengage from them and your work….