Tag Archives: workplace

Don’t Blame The Office – Let’s Recreate Our Workplace

by on December 6, 2010 in Organizations, Work

To open his opinion piece on CNN called Why the office is the worst place to work, Jason Fried writes,

Companies spend billions on rent, offices, and office equipment so their employees will have a great place to work. However, when you ask people where they go when they really need to get something done, you’ll rarely hear them say it’s the office.

Further, he writes,

I don’t blame people for not wanting to be at the office. I blame the office. The modern office has become an interruption factory. You can’t get work done at work anymore.

Sorry Jason but you completely wimped out in this article. “The office” is an inanimate object and an easy target for scorn. Why not call out your peers in the executive suite for their apparent lack of interest and commitment in making the workplace better? Why not at least start to address the real reasons for why many offices don’t work right now? Maybe that’s not fair to ask considering that CNN probably asked for a typical fluff piece.

The “office” is just a container for all the human interactions and emotions that take place within it. If the office is seen as nothing more than a place for constant interruptions, for unproductive meetings, and for pointless interactions, is that really the fault of a place…or the fault of those individuals who inhabit it?

Here’s another thought: instead of just dumping on the workplace experience, let’s be more adventurous in how we try to fix it.

1. Let’s stop with the idiotic band-aids. Electing to skip a meeting, spend a day not talking to anyone, and collaborating solely through IM isn’t going to solve anything – short- or long-term. Actually, it just makes a mockery of the real issues that keep business from functioning full throttle.

2. Let’s realize what the workplace actually is. From the C-Level down, there must be a renewal in how we think about the value of employee interactions in business. What we’ve come to know as the “workplace” is an organic community, not a machine that can be engineered, where employees are just simple cogs. But that’s what most execs and managers have been trained to believe through decades of traditional organizational thought.

3. Let’s start dealing with the real problem. Improving the workplace isn’t merely a matter of action, it involves a change in thinking. But if we ignore the problems of poor communications, ineffectual relationships, and meaningless work, they’ll continue to persist. So what do we want to see more of in our workplaces? It’s time to stop putting on the band-aids, folks. Are you with me?

What Stops Us From Practicing Soulful Work?

by on November 29, 2010 in Work

Yesterday, I sat in a workshop led by Tom Zender and based on his book, God Goes to Work: New Thought Paths to Prosperity and Profits. If you’ve been with me for a while, you might remember I used to write a blog called Alchemy of Soulful Work. As a matter of fact, I still own www.alchemyofsoulfulwork.com for the day when I get off my rear to write the book I’ve long planned to write.

It was an engaging and inspiring workshop where we were challenged to think how we could bring more of our spirituality to the workplace. Now before you get all squeamish that we participants were being prodded to proselytize, let me ease your concerns. In the workshop (and in my own personal belief) spirituality is not the same as religion – they are two very different animals. In fact, spirituality is a cornerstone to my philosophy behind soulful work.

I can speak from personal example that I’m a much better leader when I’m spiritually centered. I’m a better manager when I choose to see the inherent goodness and potential of my employees. I’m a much better employee when I operate from a we-focused mentality and not get caught up in the politics that sometimes appear around me. See, it’s not about beating people over the head with prayer and Jesus and religion. It’s all about being a positive yet non-invasive source of light in an environment that often desperately needs it.

All of which leads to a question: what stops us from practicing soulful work? Why do we choose to believe we have to divorce our spiritual life from our working life? Let’s start a dialogue and feel free to debate these questions.

Six Criteria For A Healthy And Effective Workplace

by on October 26, 2009 in Organizations

Sick and tired of being sick and tired about work? While indicators for workplace health my be declining, all is not lost. Ellen Galinsky at the Families and Work Institute notes there are six ways organizations can promote a healthier and more effective workplace.

As a manager or executive, how does your organization rank based on these criteria?

  • learning opportunities and challenge
  • a good fit between work and personal life
  • autonomy
  • having a supervisor who supports job success
  • economic security
  • a work climate of respect and trust

More from the CNN Health article…

The New NASA Video And Why It Matters To Your Organization

by on February 9, 2009 in Business

Did you happen to catch the story on NPR this morning about the video satirizing NASA’s overbureacratization and lack of imagination which has come to define the agency? It’s a perception that not only exists outside, but has become increasingly entrenched inside the organization. Aside from NASA, does this sound like your own organization? More after the video…

This video was part of a project headed by astronaut Andrew Thomas. Among other objectives, he and his team were specifically asked by senior management to look for reasons why new ideas get ignored or blocked at the agency. Rather than develop yet another snoozefest of a PowerPoint presentation that would likely find its way shelved into oblivion, they took the inspired step of producing the above video:

“And I wanted to try and capture those in a way that people would understand, in a way that would resonate,” says Thomas. Heather Hava, who plays the role of the engineer, says Thomas took stories and anecdotes that the team discussed and wove them into one storyline. “He compiled all that and wrote a little dramatization of all of our experiences,” she says. “It was a composite of many, many people’s experiences.”

There are several different takeaways from this terrific example:
Video storytelling beats the crap out of PowerPoint. Let’s be honest, if you have the choice between watching a movie or a slidedeck, are you really going to choose the latter? True, a movie isn’t always the most appropriate medium to deliver ethnographic and research results, but I believe those times constitute a minority. At the very least, video ought to be a frequent consideration in every presenter’s toolbox. Certainly the technology (Apple’s iMovie, for example) makes it easier than ever to drive home your points in unique and powerful ways.

Video is a perfect medium for the business anthropologist. Thomas’s team conducted a type of ethnography, recording assorted stories and anecdotes that would eventually build a cohesive understanding of how things actually worked inside NASA as opposed to how they were supposed to work. That’s the true value proposition of working with a business anthropologist. This video is a perfect output for distilling research findings in ways that engage and move client organizations toward positive actions.

Video is a perfect subversive tool for employees. In this case, NASA’s senior management ordered the video (well, not really…bet they were merely expecting just another presentation and bound report). But if you’re a company executive, don’t be surprised if you see more videos satirizing your organization’s internal workplace practices popping up on YouTube (there are already plenty of videos chronicling customer services experiences). Do you really know how your employees feel about their everyday work experience? Do you know if you’re getting the full picture of employee health from your middle managers? Do you really? Because the price for being wrong is finding a quickly circulating video on YouTube showing just how unimaginative, unresponsive, unappreciative, and unfulfilling your organization and workplace is.

No Tuition Reimbursement Where You Work? There Are Other Options

by on April 24, 2008 in Career

As I vaguely mentioned in my last post, after a few months of hustling to get all of my application items together, I’ve finally been accepted to the business anthropology master’s degree program at the University of North Texas. Along with my background in workplace coaching, organizational management, and leadership development, I’m excited at the prospect of adding an applied anthropology discipline to my portfolio (shoot me an email if you’re curious about what business anthropology is). My program is almost entirely online so it will be interesting to experience this type of learning and how different it might be from the traditional classroom experience.

But now comes the dawning realization that this program actually costs money (who knew?). Once upon a time I worked for a non-profit that offered a pretty sweet tuition reimbursement package in their benefits. The only condition was that you had to have a B grade or better in each class to be eligible for the reimbursement. Interestingly, the program didn’t necessarily have to be aligned with your job role (which is also rather rare). So, for instance, if you were in customer service and wanted to earn a degree in accounting, you were free to pursue that path.

I’m beginning to realize just how uncommon tuition reimbursement is in today’s organizations. Perhaps it’s always been this way or just a reflection of the current economy. Maybe you’re facing the same situation: you’re an employee planning on going back to school or a manager with staff who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree of some type…but your organization doesn’t have a tuition reimbursement or assistance program. While the financial aid is a nice benefit, there are some other ways to support academic learning in your organization:

Executive sponsorship
Think of this as an academic adviser within your organization. Each program typically assigns a faculty member to help students align their courses and learning with their professional direction. Well, apply that same type of role within your organization. Ask a senior manager or seasoned professional within your organization to be a mentor. This sponsor would ideally be someone who has the background, experience, and network related to the student’s field of study. Their purpose would be to offer insight and help connect the classroom study to the day-to-day world of work.

Workplace Learning Cohort
If you work in a big enough organization, there will likely be others pursuing a degree along with you. Why not develop a learning cohort and pull all the students together? The cohort doesn’t have to be grouped according to field of study – unless it makes particular sense to gather all the MBAs together. But, there is a strong possibility for additional learning if the group is a collective from multiple disciplines. If for no other reason to form, the cohort can be a support group for balancing the demands of work, school, and home lives.

Mini-Internships and Work Integration Options
Unless your ultimate goal is to be the prince of an ivory tower, you’re probably going back to school in order to advance your professional goals. And there’s nothing more frustrating to get all of this academic learning with no application to the real world of work. There needs to be a balance between theory and application. If your degree is directly aligned with your current work, then talk with your executive sponsor or immediate manager about how you can best integrate your academic work with your daily professional work. If your degree is not aligned with what you do daily, make a case for a mini-internship in another department (or at another organization if you can make a convincing argument). Just be prepared to show how your current work assignments won’t suffer and that the mini-internship will make you more valuable to your manager, team, and company.

The big idea is to be creative in how you integrate your professional development and your work even if there are no established programs in your organization. Anyone have other ideas or programs they’ve run across for how companies can support the learners in their workplace?