Every Friday, we prepare for you a short digest with news covering subjects related to employee engagement, collaboration, organizational culture, knowledge sharing, leadership and the future of work.
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Here’s this week’s brief:
How easy is it for people to learn…
in the natural flow of work? This is one of the questions from a survey that Jane McConnell presents and the results are not that positive. She wanted to understand if there were fundamental differences in digital workplaces that correlated to the learning, knowledge and customer dimensions in different questions, one of which is the one above. Her analysis states that very few organizations are confident about retaining knowledge and know-how when people leave. This was the case in the last two annual surveys where practically no organization reported feeling “very confident”, the highest of a 5-point scale. The few top knowledge preserving organizations do have a key characteristic in common: they all say their senior management has an open and participatory leadership style. Read the rest of Jane’s conclusions by reading her LinkedIn post People in the Digital Workplace.
Teamwork takes work. You gotta…
…know how to play together or the whole thing is just one frustrating mess. Derek Newberry and Madeline Boyer, the co-authors of “Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance” describe as the five biggest teamwork Ills and Noreen Seebacher tells us about it in her latest post CMSWire. “The tendency in teams is to try to plan for every possible situation and create rules for all potential contingencies. This is both time-consuming and ineffective. What to do? Focus on the few rules that are likely to have the biggest impact on your team’s culture and performance: information-sharing, decision-making and conflict resolution. good teaming is about being mindful about how you’re working together, and making sure to check-in frequently.” Read her post 5 Reasons to Hate Teamwork to get more on the subject.
There are different key attributes to…
…consider when assembling the right team. On of it is to find people that are willing and able to collaborate. Today’s business world generates too much data and changes too rapidly for any single individual to be effective alone. Teamwork inside the company and interacting with customers and partners outside the company are mandatory activities. Find evidence that new candidates have collaborated successfully. There is no more important task than making your team and your business successful. You can’t build a business alone, and the right people are always as important as the right funding. If you haven’t yet focused on attracting and managing the right people, it’s still too early to look for funding. Read Martin Zwilling’s post Don’t Even Bother Looking for Funding If You’ve Not Yet Assembled the Right Team for Entrepreneur.
In an age of big data, having tech skills…
…is important, but the pendulum might be starting to swing the other way. More companies are requiring a mix of technology and people skills, and 2016 is being called the year of the hybrid job. Employers need staff that can compile, interpret, and apply data to their role and the company more broadly. “Regardless of function, employees need to be able to effectively communicate what the data means and apply it to big-picture objectives,” Susan Brennan, associate vice president of university career services at Bentley University says. “But this can’t be done in a silo; collaboration and teamwork are essential.” “Continuing to developing new skills will make it easier to adapt to changes later on in your career. The future learning curve won’t be as steep if you continually immerse yourself in the learning process.” says Gloria Cordes Larson, president of Bentley University. Read more in Stephanie Vozza’s aryicle Why 2016 Is The Year Of The Hybrid Job for FastCompany.
The need for collaboration isn’t going…
…away, so it’s in engineers’ best interest to get over their fears and get out there. Newer programmers are going to enter the workforce with these collaboration and communication skills already well-honed, so older developers need to step it up. “We really try to meet our developers where they are, and help them promote their content and their ideas from a place where they’re comfortable. It really can be helpful to their career direction, too, if they’re getting out and meeting new people and exploring these other avenues,” BlazeMeter’s chief evangelist Michael Sage says. It’s easier for millennials, who grew up being recognized and rewarded by peers and parents just for participating — and they’re eager to share their work and help out by contributing however they can. Getting older developers to do the same is tough, but it can be done, according to Sage. Read Sharon Florentine’s aryicle On writing, collaboration and software development for CIO.
Happy Knowledge Sharing!
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