Welcome to the new “normal.” Even under the ongoing threat of new variants, the US is continuing to open-up, with most schools back in-class and some organizations returning to the office. However, in the face of mounting burnout, stress, and the increasingly blurred lines between home life and work life, it will not be business …
Overcoming Disruption in a Distributed World
Employee burnout is on the rise, fueled by the abrupt shift to remote work. According to Asana’s recent Anatomy of Work Index, the knowledge workforce is spending upwards of 60% of their time coordinating work (searching for information, app switching, project follow-up, etc.), while only 26% is dedicated to the skilled work they were hired …
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How Psychological Safety Builds Team Trust and Helps Your Company Grow
We all know trust is important, especially within a team environment. It enables people to show up as their best selves and work toward a shared vision. It’s the fuel that drives risk-taking, collaboration, and innovation. As Simon Sinek says, “Only when a person trusts an organization will they take personal risk to advance the …
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The Crisis of Distraction – A Pathway Out
Author and Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport’s recent New Yorker article “The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done” got me thinking. How can individuals, teams and organizations find relief from the tyranny of bombardment that’s killing our productivity. As Newport’s article states, with the spread of email in the nineties, “with all friction …
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What Google Discovered From Its Mission to Create the Ultimate Team
It’s no secret, small self-managing teams are becoming the foundational operating unit within organizations. The shift toward increasingly autonomous, team-based work is nothing new. Developers and tech pioneers Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, and 15 of their peers gave the movement definition with their breakthrough publication of the Agile Manifesto in 2001. The new thinking guided …
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Better Outcomes Begin with Shared Understanding
When I came across this quote from developer John Cutler, I found it insightful both for its simplicity and the deeper questions it evokes. “Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes, then figure out how to remove that mile altogether.” So, what exactly does he mean by “remove the mile”? One interpretation might be the …
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Rule of Thumb: When Providing Creative Feedback – Be Specific
Recently we delivered a Powerpoint design to a client. The initial feedback was: “Can you make the pictures more beautiful”. The designer’s response… “Certainly, do you have something specific in mind”? For creators, nothing is more frustrating than ambiguous feedback that lacks clarity and specificity. In most cases, it’s not the client’s fault. They’re just …
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Overcoming Project Paralysis
In business and in life, we tend to overcomplicate what it takes to complete our next project. In reality, there’s only one requirement…to start. Few understand this principle better than Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach. Dan’s 80% Approach is the simplest, clearest recipe we’ve seen for overcoming the two mental habits that stall far too …
Untangling Your Organization’s Decision Making
How is your organization arriving at its mission-critical decisions? According to recent research by McKinsey & Co, 72% of executives say the bad strategic decisions are on par or higher than the good ones. Although technology has empowered ultra efficient communication, the result is more cooks in the kitchen without enough decision-making authority. The report …
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Why You Hate Work
According to a Gallup 2018 report, just 34% of employees are engaged, involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work. 53% are not engaged and 13% are actively dis-engaged with miserable work experiences. So what’s going on? Why are American’s so unhappy with their work environments? The Energy Project says it doesn’t have to …
