A significant shift is transforming today’s corporate landscape. The gig economy and technological advances are reshaping the workplace in ways that have significant ramifications for human capital and talent management. Flexible independent work provides increasingly attractive and viable career options…
Culture
What Do You Mean By Teamwork?
Think of all the corporate town hall meetings and newsletters stressing the importance of teamwork. Picture the array of teamwork posters lining hallways and office walls. If teamwork is held up as the sine qua non of good organizational behavior,…
The Importance of Being Positive In the Face of Uncertainty
A person’s ability to deal with uncertainty is influenced by many factors. Those who are older may be able to deal with uncertainty better because they have experienced more uncertainty and made it through, and often things turned out OK…
Employees Trade Pay for Culture, Not Perks
Last month, Bloomberg reported that employees will give up big pay raises in exchange for job perks. The reported statistics from a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research were eye-catching, the Bloomberg headline teasing that “Americans Are Willing to Forgo…
How to Get Your C-Suite to Care About Culture
How can HR professionals help C-suite leaders care about culture? Or, even better, help senior leaders proactively engage in culture management? The good news is that most senior leaders understand that culture is important. 82% of respondents to Deloitte’s 2016…
Flatarchie, Holacracy and Virtual: 3 Emerging Business Structures That Might Work For You
With millennials now moving rapidly into management positions and the “fourth industrial revolution” just on the threshold, according to the World Economic Forum, traditional business practices and structures are under pressure to change like never before. But suddenly changing up…
3 Ways to Regain Control of Your Day
You may have great instincts — a knack for spotting talent, a drive for self-improvement, and a talent for empowering people — but unless you can get your priorities in order, you’re not likely to be much help to anyone, much less yourself. With…
Pilot Your Program the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ Way
“Ready, fire, aim. Do it! Make it happen! Action counts. No one ever sat on their way to success.” – Tom Peters, American business writer In the business literature, especially in articles written by academics lacking practical experience, you occasionally see…
9 Questions to Discover If Your Culture Will Scale
Expansion is a team effort. Whether you’re entering global markets, diversifying your operations, extending into new categories or trying to reach new customers with new products and services, you’re bound to need new people on board; sometimes, entirely new offices….
HR Roundtable: What Do You Do When It’s the Boss Who Wastes Everyone’s Time?
The September (Cincinnati) HR Roundtable had a bit of a tongue in cheek topic based on an article from The Wall Street Journal: “How Bosses Waste Their Employees’ Time.” (Click here to check it out. Subscription required.) To get the…
You Need the ‘Informal Leaders’ to Get Things Done
Everyone is familiar with the term C-suite. The C-suite is populated with the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer… The list goes on and on. The people who inhabit the C-suite are the formal leaders of the…
The ‘Sexy’ Side of Time & Attendance: It’s Not Just Punching In
What’s the sexiest tech acquisition of the past five or six years? You probably just had “Instagram” somewhere near your lips, but what if it were a time and attendance suite? Like it or not, some HCM acquisitions are notably…
A Merger Is the Time For Workers to Double-Down
Mergers are a fact of working life. They can be very good news for organizations as they offer opportunities for increased efficiency and scale. When managed well, they can bring about efficiency in the workplace and economy. Yet mergers cause…
How Change Agents Helped These Companies Transform Their Culture
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…
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…