As I write this, many thousands of people have been directly affected by the COVID-19 coronavirus, including members of my family. It is not a time for glib comments. But millions of people face the prospect of working from home for the first time. Likewise, many managers and many companies are going to have to learn how to make remote working work for them. This article is for them.
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How Winston Churchill used humour as a management tool
I’ve just finished re-reading Churchill’s war memoirs and also Andrew Roberts’s new book, Masters and Commanders, about the relationship between Roosevelt and Marshall, Churchill and Brooke.
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5 leadership lessons from the captains of Star Trek
Few science fiction franchises can claim to be as inspirational as the philosophical heavyweight that is Star Trek. Far from being a quaint canon of quirky aliens, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek has been an unending source of inspiration and leadership lessons. In this article, Grace O’Brien pulls out some of the best insights.
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Employee engagement: 11 quick wins you can do today
Employee engagement matters. Yet, only 15 percent of employees are actually engaged in the workplace, according to Gallup.
A demotivated, disengaged team member is less creative and less productive. Worse, cynicism and disillusionment are contagious, leading to higher staff turnover and dysfunctional teams.
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The best and worst job titles
Bin man or Environmental Maintenance Officer? Why are job titles getting so ridiculous?
Perhaps I’m sitting in a glass house throwing stones because I call myself CEO and Writer-in-chief but now the BBC has given us a delightful list of ridiculous titles, including:
- Director of first impressions (= Receptionist)
- Environmental maintenance officer (= Bin man)
- Eviction technicians (= Bouncers)
Little data: why it matters more than big data
Everyone’s talking about ‘big data’. There’s no doubt that there are more bits and bytes than ever before. As George Dyson writes ‘when the digital universe began, in 1951 in New Jersey, it was just 5 kilobytes in size’. Today, by some estimates, the total amount of information in the world adds up to 2.7 zettabytes. But what about insight, analysis, outcomes?
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