Overview: Business

"we’ve applied econometric principles to the results of over 200 intranet surveys and… statistically pinpointed which intranet attributes most impact a user’s perception of their intranet. This first post... showing what employees prefer to look and find when they view their company’s intranet." Some surprising results, For example, although I'…

" What was simply needed was to tweak the ‘rules of the game’ and to incentivize the right people so as to drive the right behaviors. In other words, by turning a predictable work process that had always led to the corresponding predictable sub-optimal outcomes into something fresh that talked to people’s EQ, we managed to make ‘work as natural as…

A fun interactive setting out the 'ideal team & process' required for building interactives. Rarely seen in real life, sadly. - One Approach Leading Interactive Expeditions: Eric Cade Schoenborn | Creative Director | Knight Foundation

"companies that subscribe to the Plus plan will be able to request every message that employees have sent on the service from that point forward, including direct messages to coworkers and a history of any changes you made to your messages." - Slack alters privacy policy to let bosses read your messages | The Verge

"businesses ... can, without realizing it, generate an environment hostile to innovation... frontline business units... are optimized to relatively short-term goals that are anchored in what they are currently doing or selling rather than in what they could be doing differently. As a result, line managers instinctively reject innovations that won…

"On the surface, no single factor seems to set Slack apart from a plethora of other collaboration tools. However, a closer look using the model described the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Product, reveals the user psychology behind the company's success." - The Psychology of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise App: Why Is Slack So Habit-Formi…

" 2015 is likely to see a democratization of data throughout the organization, meaning that more departments will become adept at using the insight that it can bring. Rather than working towards a central strategy that is created by senior management, day-to-day activities will be based on data and the insights created from it." - Big Data Top T…

"Here's what I've come up with for advice to the 20-year-old version of me on being creative." Particularly like Neil Gaiman's advice: " A lot of times ideas will turn up when you're doing something else. And, most of all, ideas come from confluence - they come from two things flowing together. " Which is why I-Labs is all about bringing peo…

"Charted automatically visualizes data. Give it the link to a data file and Charted returns a beautiful, shareable visualization of that data... open-sourced and available for anyone to use at charted.co... it adjusts to any screen, automatically updates itself" - Introducing Charted - Data Lab - Medium

Interesting description of the benefits of being a 'fast follower' by The Economist's Paul Rossi: "instilling a culture across the business where staff are keeping an eye on what's going on ...the editorial side [is] ... actively talking to people about new technologies. How to deliver content, how to deliver video... on the commercial team everbo…

"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 …

My most important two questions were 'what are you going to do when you get selected?' and then I always followed up with 'and what will you do if you aren't selected?'.

"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…

"“Yes, and…” is the closest thing improv comedy has to a cardinal rule. The rule goes like this: When the first performer says something, the next performer has to say “Yes, and…” instead of negating or dropping what the first performer said. It’s a powerful rule because it allows a comedy scene to go in unexpected, delightful directions... Insid…

"Expanding on the “good ideas that look like bad ideas” concept ... what does it take for large companies to innovate? " - How Can Large Companies Innovate? | Andreessen Horowitz

"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

(Editor's note: Ms Swift is apparently a pop star) "The most successful businesses today are movements more than companies. Movements don't market. Movements inspire and engage. They create an emotional connection through storytelling. Not stories to be enjoyed passively but stories we see ourselves in, stories we can actively participate in...…

"movements... seem to self-organize and spread virally, as if they were LOLCats or some other digital meme. So why can’t we get our organizations to act the same way? You would think that with command and incentive structures in place, it would be easier for leaders to set a direction and get things moving, but anyone who’s run an enterprise kno…

"recent scientific work is putting a much finer point on just how stories change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors... to motivate a desire to help others, a story must first ... develop tension during the narrative... it is likely that attentive viewers/listeners will come to share the emotions of the characters in it and continue mimicking t…

Tackling corporate memory loss and innovation failure requires a different paradigm than that offered by social media.

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…

"Traditional intranets required someone at the helm with a broad perspective and variety of skills. Newer social intranets, with their greater ability to influence company culture and productivity, have only added to the pile of needed skills. In this article we explain what the core skills are for successful intranet managers, common gaps in exp…

"Ideas represent possibilities for alternate futures. But, ideas are a commodity ... concepts until they’re brought to life. And that takes ... courage, passion, and resilience... Ideapod creates a creative community where people and ideas come together. And by together, I mean we invest in and build an active community where ideas and engagemen…

"Swarmize enables journalists to tell new, collaborative stories by making use of real-time data collection and visualisation" Just the tests they've already done are awesome. The code's on GitHub. Think to use in surveys, real-time social media monitoring, live blogs ... anything where real-time is useful and/or you might want a second bite at t…

"calling people out.. comes from a place of ego or reaction. The intent ... is to make the other person wrong... of making them lose face. The tone is adversarial... the burden of change is on the other person... Calling people forth, in contrast, comes from a place of service and an open heart. ... It feels more like coaching than scolding." - …

While aimed at news organisation leaders, a lot of these insights apply to any organisation in the content creation business today: "When your mother lectured you that “actions speak louder than words,” she was giving important advice for culture change... if the leaders aren’t setting an example of change, don’t be surprised if change is slow or…

An organisation which cannot remember cannot learn; an organisation which cannot learn cannot improve.

""There's no right structure for an engineering team," says Thrall. "It really depends on where you are in product development. We have things that are pods, that are product-focused or feature-focused. That's your first family." The second family engineers belong to are working groups—say, of developers familiar with Apple's iOS or Google's Andr…

"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