Business
Your Employees Have All the Creativity You Need. Let Them Prove It. (via Harvard Business Review)
This post could be filed under the growth vs. fixed mindset. “Creativity is inherent because each of us has a perspective only one has; it simply needs to be liberated.”
Balancing the Company’s Needs and Employee Satisfaction (via Harvard Business Review)
- Leaders need to help foster a deeper sense of purpose and connect individuals to that
- Engagement happens when people can own the work and contribute to their fullest potential; perks like onsite fitness or meditation rooms address the symptoms, not the disease
- Give people lower on the org chart a chance to showcase their work to those above them
Why Science-Driven Companies Should Use Agile (via Harvard Business Review)
I wasn’t aware that pharmaceutical companies, for example, weren’t using some flavor of Agile such as Lean. This post describes how you can get an R&D department from their current process to a more Agile one.
Career
Do we have to love our work? (via Software Lead Weekly)
No, we don’t. We can appreciate it without it consuming us. The vibe I got from this post was, “It’s okay to be okay.”
Communication
Informal Communication (via Software Lead Weekly)
This is GitLab’s playbook on how they communicate being remote-only. It covers everything from formal meetings to social calls to keep communication flowing in a healthy way.
Culture
The Secrets of Successful Female Networkers (via Harvard Business Review)
- Efficient — every “yes” means a “no” to something else
- Nimble — fluidity in networking
- Boundary spanning — determining what new connections to make
- Energy-balanced — competence, warmth, intelligent, emotionally intelligent, humor, presence, listening
“Remote: Office Not Required” (Part 7 of 7)
Our book club concluded our discussion of the book, with the last section covering life as a remote worker.
For Women in Business, Beauty Is a Liability (via Harvard Business Review)
Research showed that attractive women that delivered bad news (e.g., job cuts) were considered more manipulative than a man delivering the same news. The author states that the bias went away if participants were primed to feel romantically secure first. Attractiveness bias is a real phenomenon.
Making Work Less Stressful and More Engaging for Your Employees (via Harvard Business Review)
This post is a fantastic collection of organization-level approaches for decreasing burnout, retaining people, etc.
- Work environment: increase psychological safety, build in regular breaks, encourage using private workspaces to focus, set boundaries around time outside of work, look into flexible work policies
- Employee engagement: be transparent, make sure people are in the right roles, give more autonomy, demonstrate commitment to growth/progression, create a culture of recognition, instill a sense of purpose
On Messing Up Your Remote Team—And Then Getting It Right (via Software Lead Weekly)
Having recently finished reading Remote: Office Not Required, I’m interested to hear how people experience remote work in 2019. This quotation resonated with me: “Distributed workers rely on far more structure than local workers do, because they don’t have all the informal cues that let a small team of four to five close friends row in the same direction.” Getting structure first, then going remote seems less risky.
Fitness
The Sports Surfaces Debate (via NASM)
(No link is available, as it’s behind a paywall.) This was an article about how various flooring surfaces and footwear impact safety in a fitness setting. Completing this article was part of my continuing education for my Program Group Exercise certification from AFAA.
Process
5 Mental Mistakes That Kill Your Productivity (via Harvard Business Review)
- You overestimate how much focused time you have in a typical day. Acknowledge this and be focused during that 60-90 minute period.
- You overlook proven, sustainable methods that seem too boring or too simple. Many tips have stood the test of time (e.g., ensure you have needed materials in hand and next steps defined to reduce the friction of getting started), so use them.
- You think about change in an all-or-nothing way. Small wins add up.
- You forget how to do recurrent but infrequent tasks. Write up the steps and email them to yourself.
- You underestimate the costs of small time/energy leaks. These disrupt flow, so create systems (e.g., reducing unnecessary decisions, streamlining and simplifying tasks, batching, automating, outsourcing, or using checklists) to keep these managed.
Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together (via Harvard Business Review)
Individuals do not sequentially follow a path for solving a problem: define, generate solutions, evaluate, choose, make a plan. This gets amplified in groups because every individual is shifting stages, and those shifts are out of phase with everyone else. A solution is to have each agenda item have a problem solving stage and a measurable outcome.