Tag Archives: productivity

Links of the Week (Week 48/2015)

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LinksoftheWeek

Here are our Links of the Week, curated from our link collection.

Productivity

What can we do to drive our inspiration and prevent us from getting blocked in our work? Get out, read, have fun, be open! Problems of Output are Problems of Input.

Business Planning

You want to start your own business but have no desire or time to write a 60 pages long business plan? The Lean Canvas for business planning is a handy tool to track your progress and keep stakeholders on board. How to Run More Effective Board Meetings with a Business Model Progress Timeline.

Good Work

This articles analyses how our understanding of the human nature shapes current workplaces and why this leads to unsatisfied humans. It has an illustrating example how economic incentives destroy the moral grounds of decent behavior. The author pleads for shaping workplaces that motivate people to do the (morally) right thing instead of the economic right thing. Psychologist Barry Schwartz on What Motivates Us to Work, Why Incentives Fail, and How Our Ideas About Human Nature Shape Who We Become.

Working Out Loud

John Stepper asks why especially Germans are interested in Working Out Loud. He points out that it doesn’t depend on Nationality: “They share the universal intrinsic motivators of autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and they feel working out loud can give them more control over their work and life while increasing their access to learning and their sense of connectedness.” Why Are So Many German Companies Interested In Working Out Loud?

Auf deutsch:

Die Bahn als innovatives Unternehmen? Im so genannten d.lab wird seit April kräftig experimentiert und entwickelt, um eine “Verbesserung des Kundenerlebnisses” herbeizuführen. Geschäftsführererin Kerstin Hartmann erklärt im Interview genauer, wie das gehen soll: Im Bahn-Labor der innovativen Ideen.

In der Ideenschmiede kann man übrigens mitmachen, vielleicht die Chance, gelegentlichen Bahnfrust in “konstruktive Bahnen” zu lenken?

Links of the Week (Week 45/2015)

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LinksoftheWeek

Here are our Links of the Week, curated from our link collection.

Holacracy

Considering to change your organization model? This article points out some of the benefits of running on Holacracy and under which circumstances its adaption is most successful. Is Holacracy Right for You? Here Is What You Need to Know.
“So whether you decide to pursue Holacracy or not, you should take some time thinking about the issues that it brings to the fore and ask: If not Holacracy, then what?”
Voys and Devhouse Spindle have implemented Holacracy in the spring this year. In an interview the founder Mark Vletter gives a review of the process and how Holacracy changed his life. Six Month Holacracy.
“Getting people involved and making them understand how to become entrepreneurial. I feel that in the long run this is most crucial and difficult part.”

Consulting

A love declaration to the white board. The article counts the pros of using a white board and explains its role in consulting work: Consulting confession: I love the white board.

“It makes the experience creative, tactile, interactive, and open-ended. It’s a running joke with my teams that I will take any opportunity to pickup a dry-erase pen and head towards the whiteboard – like a moth to a night light.”
Tom Nixon offers an important clarification to Frederic Laloux book Reinventing Organisations. He emphasises the role of the founder of the organization despite the decentralized process in Holacracy or Sociocracy. The founder is the one who holds the space and provides the vision defining an existential value for the development and motivation of the people in the organization. Nixon develops his understanding of organisations further into an organic web of relations “and consider all of humanity as one interconnected ecosystem”. Resolving the awkward Paradox in Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations. 
“It organically grows what’s working, and rejects what isn’t. Yet there’s still one person holding the vision for the whole.”

Body & Mind

Some good tips for those sitting at their work: Pay back your movement debt. Your body will be thankful. How to Reverse the Damage of Sitting and Human Domestication.

Auf deutsch:

Über Ideale, Erwachsenwerden, Weltverbesserung und Pragmatismus. Mit einem Schuss Kant. Man fühlt sich besser, wenn man versucht die Welt zu verbessern.
“Nach einer verbreiteten Ansicht bedeutet erwachsen zu werden, dass man auf die eigenen Hoffnungen und Träume verzichtet und sich mit der Realität abfindet. Ich finde das nicht erwachsen, sondern trostlos.”

What is Productivity?

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Do you have your own definitions for concepts or do you use whatever is in the dictionary?

I love having my own definitions. Depending on how you define something, you experience life differently.

Take success for example. What is success? There are infinite ways to define it. Examples are “earning a lot of money”, “having a lot of fun” or “being healthy”. Can you see how choosing one of these definitions over the other would shape the choices you make for yourself?

So it is for productivity.

Since one of the things I do is help people become more productive, I have been asking myself how to define this concept.

Continue reading What is Productivity? →

Why personal productivity matters in Holacracy

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Imagine that you are the owner and CEO of a company and you are considering to use Holacracy as an operating system. That basically means, you give up the power to tell your employees what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. However much you may be excited about moving to such a self-organising structure, deep down you also feel fearful (or maybe not so deep down!):

What if my employees take different actions and directions than I would like them to take? What if they forget things? How can I make sure they’ll be taking the right decisions?

Trust and transparency

It takes a certain amount of basic trust in your employees, and people in general, to decide to use Holacracy. Besides that, it actually provides the proper framework for former decision-makers to be able to relax about controlling the work that needs to be done in the company.

Continue reading Why personal productivity matters in Holacracy →