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.
Follow us on Twitter for the latest news.
Here’s this week’s brief:
“Innovation happens when you take…
…somebody with a good idea and somebody with the technical skills and know-how to take it to the next level — so bridging those worlds is absolutely important. What that means for CIOs is that their role is changing from all things IT to more of a consultant to the business, but also a broker of relationships. Assuming that most ideas will come from places other than the innovation team or the executive team, how do you build that bridge? The CIO is one of the leaders — and maybe the leader — that needs to facilitate that conversation and look for that collaboration.” said Derek Roos, the CEO and co-founder of Boston-based Mendix in an interview with writer Nicole Laskowski. Read what else he got to say in Nicole’s article Digital innovation hinges on strong leadership, collaboration for TechTarget.
Why do some organizations successfully…
…do more with less and improve their productivity over time, while similar organizations struggle? The differentiator may lie in an organization’s ability to recognize the people factor in improvement. The real engine of change — and the secret behind the success of many organizations — is engaged teams who feel the drive to improve and succeed. Ivan Seselj believes that ongoing communication is one of the steps to take in order to improve employee engagement and drive a positive improvement culture. “Communication is critical to get and keep people involved, engaged and driving change. Celebrate successes, share information, keep it fun and establish a feedback loop.”. Read his article Improve Employee Motivation With These 5 Steps for CMSWire to get other tips.
Collaboration is the key to success in…
…a team environment. If a team works well together, work gets done more efficiently, and that work tends to be of higher quality. In addition, team members who are able to function well together are more likely to stay inspired and motivated throughout a project. Whereas workers in an unbalanced team are more likely to get discouraged and be less effective. But a research suggests that approximately three to five percent of employees contribute 20 to 35 % of all value-added collaborations. So how do you empower top collaborators to stay engaged while not burning them out? One place to start is by redistributing responsibilities among the group. Since top-performers are more likely to take on more work, actively assigning responsibilities and decision-making capabilities to various team members may help. Second, it’s important to recognize and reward those team members who play an integral role in assisting the top performers. Read Motivation Station: 3 Scientifically Proven Ways To Inspire Your Team by Ekta Sahasi for Business.com.
As a cross-cultural strategist, Valerie…
…Berset-Price predominantly works with multinational corporations, providing their global teams with tools and training to help them optimize the collaboration they must have across cultures. While some of what she does lies in cross-cultural awareness, a large part of her job is dedicated to helping develop employee and leadership courage. After all, what good are ideas if no one has the courage to act, develop, test, and try? “You won’t always have all the answers, and global companies that stretch into new markets can attest to this. Real, sustained growth is only possible for the brave, those who lead with an open mind, business flexibility, and inclusive collaboration practices. Workplace courage is essentially modeling the good business behavior you want from leadership: accountability, engagement, trustworthiness, active self-awareness and candid communication.”. Read her article for Huffington Post The Courage Workout: 5 Ways To Flex Your Brave Muscles at Work.
“I work with exceptionally smart people…
…We’re all individually capable of doing amazing work and really know how to own the projects that we are accountable for. If you work in a self-organized company like I do, you might agree on how you and your colleagues have to be excellent at self-managing. This means having sharp work habits, self-awareness, and self-efficacy. But our strategy statement serves as a reminder that we need to do more than crush it on our own work. We have to crush it as a team, too.” says Tim Casasola, who handles organizational design at The Ready. His working hypothesis is this: “For a company to truly achieve self-organization, it must self-manage on a team and an individual level. Teams and individuals are equally important to our organizations, self-organized or not. Because for an organization to fulfill its mission and do meaningful, impactful work, our teams must collaborate at their best and our people must be at their best.”. Read his Medium post, Self-Organization Isn’t Just About the Self to learn more.
Happy Knowledge Sharing!
Comments are closed.