"Instead of trying to make them happy, ask them to do something hard... @the opportunity to use skills and abilities” has displaced “job security” as the top driver of satisfaction, and it consistently ranks among the top two... Employees don’t just want their skills used; they want them stretched.... Respondents ... started to feel stale after o…

"So, does engagement actually cause higher performance, or are high-performing employees just more engaged?... In one of the few robust studies to examine this issue, Ben Schneider and colleagues mined archival engagement and performance data for several Fortune 100 companies. " - To Motivate Employees, Help Them Do Their Jobs Better

"... is to foster alignment and enthusiasm toward the right goal. I’m thinking of official leaders (and myself) when writing the above, but there are official and unofficial leaders in every organization. " Very short post, very worth reading. Sometimes the simplest insights are the most powerful. - The Job of Leadership — Inside Medium — Medium

The basic reasons we launched I-Labs are all here: "The most powerful way of learning is ...  to have conversation... the best examples of great insight nearly always come from cases where people shared knowledge or experience.... every organisation is sitting on a wealth of information that potentially contains insight... This information is ly…

"Employees responded that only 54% of the time spent in meetings was time well spent. They cited unclear meeting purpose, unnecessary standing meetings, overly long meetings and unnecessary attendees as reasons for unproductive meetings." - Kill the weekly meeting – Quartz

Lessmeeting looks like a cool tool. Even if you don't try it: "Below is our best practices guide to writing meeting agendas, capturing meeting minutes and following up on action items:"

"The worst part about meetings? Usually, they lead to more meetings." A lot to like here. I have 3 meetings with upper mgt per month, and a short Skypescrum with my colleagues every morning. The rest of the time I work from home. Sounds like many have a worse time: "weekly meetings ... often have no justification for existing and usually can be …

"We couldn't understand why people without technical knowledge had to tell programmers "what" to do and, furthermore, they had to supervise "how" programmers did it." At last. Someone said it. And also quite a bit more about the timesucks that are meetings, email and commuting. These guys avoid all of them, work 4 days/week and are growing …

"the biggest impact on competitive advantage comes not from products, processes or technology, but empowered employees. And with the lines between Internal and External Communication becoming increasingly blurred, ensuring your people are engaged and empowered has never been more critical.... Leading Internal Communication teams are already bla…

"Government around the world is pretty good at thinking about its own needs — they often put their political needs followed by the policy needs. The actual machine of government comes second. The third need then generally becomes the system needs, so the IT or whatever system’s driving it... the user comes a poor fourth, really." Turning that ups…

"In a circumstance where two people who report to you are having an acrimonious disagreement, you will need a thoughtful approach with some options to resolve the problem. " - Conflict Resolution: Being a Successful Manager | LinkedIn

Excellent insider's view of both theory & practice... "My first holacracy meeting made me want to quit my job. One year later, ... I can’t imagine going back to our old way of working.... a holacracy eschews titles and instead builds a chain of command based on the work that needs to be done. The group decides to distribute tasks. Those responsi…

"this is the eternal founder dilemma — which hats do you wear, which ones do you give to others, which ones do you forget about? all in less time than you need, while your hair is on fire & your house is burning down. Choose. but there’s one job you can’t hand off to anyone else: setting the vision and inspiring your team. that job is yours & you…

Just listed to HBR's podcast interview with Pentland. Will probably get this book. Typically good roundup by Greg Satell: "Pentland’s research has found that the most important predictor of success in a group is the amount—not the content—of social interaction. It is exposure to peer activity that drives learning and changes in behavior.... in …

A whole bunch of reasons why the wrong consultants are hired for the wrong reasons: "When we don’t know much about somebody, we ... think about people in over-optimistic ways...what normal individual can stand up against an outsider or expert made up of pixie dust and rainbows? ... when we go looking for a better expert ... we tend to find them…

"In the end, meetings turn out to be a waste of time — just people sitting around, chatting, wasting hours of precious time (even preparing for it). Approximately 15 percent of your time working in any company is spent in meetings. That number is more than doubled for middle managers, while executives spend 50% of their time stuck in meetings."

Brian Solis on LinkedIn: "a pattern of best practices ... these pillars represent the cultural capstones that the most innovative companies in the world invest in to stay ahead of the curve." - How to Build a Culture of Innovation Pt. 2: The 12 Pillars of Innovation | LinkedIn

Nothing in here about information flow management, but a lot of interesting theory about how evolutionary psychology reinforces the need to support pyramidal organisational structures. "power and winning create a self-reinforcing dynamic. Talented people associate themselves with success and attract other talented people to their side, making con…

"Performance reviews that are tied to compensation create a blame-oriented culture. It’s well known that they reinforce hierarchy, undermine collegiality, work against cooperative problem solving, discourage straight talk, and too easily become politicized. They’re self-defeating and demoralizing for all concerned. Even high performers suffer, bec…

"coming up with creative ideas on demand is only part of the answer. Just as crucial is how ideas link to action. ...we have developed an integrative process for idea generation based on approaches drawn education, consumer research, business model design and emergent strategy... The first three steps are designed to help managers understa…

"I had an ethics class where the explicit message was, “Crime doesn’t pay.” But the implicit message was, “It isn’t a crime if it is merely immoral and not strictly against the law.” " - Why business schools charge so much and pay their teachers so little – Quartz

Great FT.com piece: "... to work through the psychology of their clients, businesses commonly rely on market research... But they do not typically step back and properly think about human nature from a 2,000-year cultural perspective, and their analyses of their customers suffer as a result... There is (fortunately) no enduring conflict between …

"I think companies such as Asana (which I love) will be the future of business consultancy. They will substitute the big consultancies leveraging big data, just like Coursera will displace traditional course providers by leveraging information on how people use training and using this information to design more effective training. Business consult…

File this under “Next time someone says they do it better in America”... “Everything about the way the government builds large technical projects contrasts unfavorably”... a management not a technology failure. Obama’s error was not to empower technologists to tell him the truth

Great article on Medium. Best part comes at the end: "This week we launched an initiative that aims to ease the conflict between these opposing forces. Each of our team members gets to study a subject of their choice over the period of a year. It's a long term study initiative that resembles a PhD. Think of it more like a thesis than project wo…

"Idiots come in 3 types. The first type is what I call the politician, the second type is the spectator and then last but not least there is the the whiner. Every business I’ve worked with has them either in or around them."