Systems with Design from Trust: assume most (not all) people have good intent."initially feel counterintuitive, even risky...social: they rely on human relationships. appealing: once you wrap your head around them, you want more."The discomfort is a symptom of how today's default setting is mistrust: "we’ve internalized the ass…

"Do you have a job that you secretly believe is pointless?... you have a “bullshit job.”", and so do "millions of ... clerical workers, administrators, consultants, telemarketers, corporate lawyers, service personnel...".We built enough tech to free us, but instead "we’ve invented a whole universe of futile occupations tha…

Liberating Structures is a pattern language that "provides a menu of thirty-three Liberating Structures to replace or complement conventional practices... [which are] either too inhibiting (presentations, status reports and managed discussions) or too loose and disorganized (open discussions and brainstorms) to creatively engage people ... to…

adrenalin had energised locked-down employees at first. Only at the five-week mark did enforced remote working start to breed anxiety... The prospect of ... a bland diet of videocalls and virtual encounters is draining... It is not hard to achieve commitment ... during a crisis. Doubters’ stock objection ... evaporated under pressure... But ... …

despite all the talk about culture, many business leaders remain confused... organizational culture is “the shared basic assumptions, values, and beliefs... taught to newcomers as the proper way to think and feel...think of culture as a management system... makes the idea much more concrete...staff... make all sorts of decisions every day ... in a…

what's usually meant by "collaboration" is 1) plenty of ad-hoc meetings and 2) open-plan offices that increase the likelihood that such meetings take place... open-plan offices... are productivity sinkholes... collaboration tends to penalize the competent who end up doing most of the work. A recent study published in Applied Psychology has now co…

employees have little faith in their leadership:22% of employees strongly agree the leadership of their organization has a clear direction for the organization.15% of employees strongly agree the leadership of their organization makes them enthusiastic about the future.13% of employees strongly agree the leadership of their organization communicat…

it only takes few weeks before you receive a full diagnostic report providing you with new levers to accelerate the development of your organization. Your employees invest less than 10 minutes completing a user-friendly questionnaire that they can do from their work or home computer, tablet or smartphone – we will do the rest.

at #EuroComm16... “Beyond Engagement.”... how uncoupling the IC function from a focus on Employee Engagement survey scores could have a liberating effect on the function and the profession, and potentially on employees and their enterprises as well... We weren’t here to praise the Employee Engagement Survey. We were here to bury it... In giving …

What happened when I was invited to “do a Rápido” at the IABC’s conference in Rotterdam earlier this week.

growth in engagement has remained flat for most of 2015 – and we’ve seen little more than a two-point increase over the past two and one-half years... Engagement Largely Comes Down To Whether People Have A Manager Who Cares About Them, Grows Them And Appreciates Them - Employee Engagement Isn't Getting Better And Gallup Shares The Surprising Re…

Gallup discovered 82% of hiring processes didn't pick the person with the right talent ... Add the wrong person into your employee mix ... and you could be looking at the cause of 80% of your turnovers. - 4 questions managers ask to better compare equally qualified candidates

"nobody tells you anything when it comes to bubbling-up abuse from the trenches. It’s completely unrealistic to expect someone five levels deep in the bowels of the organization to reach out to the fifth-richest man in the world and trouble him ... It doesn’t matter how many invitations to open doors... you extend, it’s just not going to happen. …

“The only way you can keep great employees in the company is by treating them like great employees.... Here are five truly idiotic HR policies that will keep your best employees racing for the exits the minute they get the chance — and keep you re-filling the same positions over and over:" Five Stupid Rules That Drive Great Employees Away, F…

"... management has become so obsessed with the “engagement” of its staff that it now places more importance on it than sales... [because] the components of engagement—employee happiness and commitment to the business—are exactly what drive sales, and therefore the bottom line... the key to this new breed of internal-communications tools... is …

Good management and approach can make a real difference. Since it's the company's job to manage interns well, here are seven tips will help you get the most out of your summer interns. - 7 Ways to Make the Most Out of Your Summer Interns | Inc.com

"If organizations want to enable workers to bring not only their hands but also their heads to work, then jobs need to be redesigned to give people ownership of (1) how they perform tasks, (2) their identity, and (3) their time.... managers complain that their employees don’t think for themselves. Yet ... punish their subordinates for failing …

"If employees ... were happier in their workplaces, they also tended to work in business units with higher levels of productivity, profit, retention, and customer satisfaction. This shows a link between how employees feel and how they perform. Are you a manager who wants to create a happier and more productive work environment? Are you a job se…

"companies are hungry to build employee engagement. At the same time, managers struggle to figure out what works and are reluctant to hand over any autonomy...talent management processes often enforce conformity, legitimize mediocrity and penalize failed attempts at innovative thinking. four Deloitte LLP offices in India... initiated a contest. E…

"There has been a strong increase in the proportion of workers that are disengaged in the past five years, perhaps doubling ... the costs of this disengagement can be very high... remote workers - those that work somewhere other than where their boss works - are more engaged.... when workers are remote, the leader's behaviors change, and that .…

" the 3D Workforce: Distributed, Decentralized, and Discontinuous... is really a 4D workforce, however, because these is a fourth factor: Disengagement." Good overview of some recent research, with some conclusions such as: "...as companies become more fast and loose with the transition to social business models of operations, employee engag…

"Companies on Fortune’s “100 best companies to work for” list returned 14%/year on their stock compared to 6% for the average company... The Workplace Fund ... investing only in companies that have outstanding workplaces. It’s had a 9.63% return since its inception in April 2005, compared with the S&P 5.58% over the same period... Gallup resea…

"Relationship Economics - how communication & engagement helps business grow relationships with employees and customers to improve their bottom line." Relationship Economics - YouTube

"The future of work is screwed. It's being built upon a foundation of legacy thinking and outdated value systems. Instead, the future of work should start with a reboot in company culture and employee engagement." The 10 reasons are both cutting and funny and worth a read. To dig deeper, there's even a free report, summarised in text & video. K…

Fairly typical piece on integrating social media into organisations to improve customer service, employee productivity and sales. These points have been made before, but this article brings them together well and provides plenty of links to the underlying research, which makes it useful if you need to supporting arguments for change management. -…

"the basics of human resources management goals and practices have remained little changed, philosophically and practically.... The main metaphor today’s HR professionals live in is still a machine with its designed-and-fitted parts and cogs, as opposed to the ‘living’ system of social networks in which people participate and interact... Let’s …

"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

"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…