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…
Productivity
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…
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…
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?…
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,…
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…
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,…
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….
Put Away the Phone. Leave the Office and Start Meeting the People Who Do the Work
Note: The following is an excerpt from the author’s new book, When Leadership Improves, Everyone Wins. Realize that as leaders, we are signal senders. What signal does it send to our people when we stay on the executive floor or…
Is Happiness the Secret to Engagement?
Note: This article is part of an occasional series dedicated to exploring the contribution of human capital assets (people!) to the valuation of a business. Welcome to The New ROI: Return on Individuals. Previous articles in the series can be found here. ∼∼∼∼∼ “A little girl…
The Productivity Advice HR Professionals Should Ignore
Google “productivity advice,” and you’ll see thousands of articles offering tips on how to get more done in a day at the office. Almost every single one of them recommends only checking email at predetermined times to prevent incoming messages…
Being Smart Isn’t Enough to Succeed
Note: This article is part of an occasional series dedicated to exploring the contribution of human capital assets (people!) to the valuation of a business. Welcome to The New ROI: Return on Individuals. Previous articles in the series can be found here. ∼∼∼∼∼ Why do some…
Sometimes You Need to Eat the Frog Later
We’ve all heard or read that it’s best to jump on your toughest tasks early in your work shift, using as a guide this famous aphorism: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen…
If Your Office Is Dim, So Are You
“Dim lights are producing dimwits” – Joel Soler, American psychologist Do you find a dimly-lit workspace preferable to a brightly-lit office? Some people do. Perhaps you find it calming and relaxing; or maybe the setting makes you feel comfortable at a…
Don’t Fight the Robots, Embrace Them
We’ve all heard doom and gloom reports of the coming AI revolution. Some forecasters predict a very grim future indeed: Robots take over and humans find themselves unceremoniously kicked to the curb, suddenly unable to provide for themselves and their…
For More Productive Meetings, Do a Mindset Check-In First
“Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. “ — Bruce Lee We live in a distracted society. Having focus is a scarce currency. No surprise distractions are taking a toll…
Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect. Deliberate Practice Does
“Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” – Malcolm Gladwell, Canadian writer and journalist. Per the classic joke, we all know how to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, practice, practice. More recently, Malcolm Gladwell has distilled the concept of…
4 Ways Companies Can Combat Tech Addiction
Technology addiction is damaging our personal and work lives. Studies suggest people are increasingly unhappy with their use of screen time and social media. The endless refresh cycle of major apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, etc. are highly addictive…
Make Monday a Holiday? In So Many Ways, It Mostly Is
Are you ready for Monday? Have you reminded the troops about the company’s sick leave policy? The rules about showing up late for work? Have you given up? Probably a good idea, because you can’t win. The day after the…