6 Suggestions on How to Work From Home and Stay Productive
December 10th, 2009 by Cris Hagen
More and more I see companies embracing “work-at-home” policies, not only as a way to be more “green” by keeping cars off the road, but as a way to reduce the real estate “footprint” in the office. Some companies estimate the cost of maintaining office space for an employee at around $9,000/year. These same companies are offering as much as $1,000 for work-at-home employees to purchase the necessary office equipment to set up and maintain a home office.
So as the economic drivers for working at home seem to be well established and as companies define the appropriate policies and procedures for determining which jobs lend themselves to “working-at-home” (not to mention the question of how managers will measure the productivity of employees working at home), the question is, how does the “work-at-home” employee stay productive?
Speaking from experience, I would like to offer the following suggestions, and then invite the reader to contribute their own ideas. Read the rest of this entry »
Does Light Boost Workplace Productivity? Green Offices Increase Business Success
November 13th, 2009 by Cris Hagen
We’ve all heard of the “Hawthorne Effect”, right? Studies done between 1924-1932 at the Hawthorne Works (a Western Electric facility located outside of Chicago) attempted to study the effects of lowering or raising the levels of light in the building on employee productivity. As students of OD, we learned that workers responded with higher productivity levels NOT because of higher or lower levels of light, but primarily because they were being shown some interest by management. In fact, other changes such as maintaining clean work stations, clearing floors of obstacles, and even relocating workstations resulted in increased productivity for short periods of time.
A quick Google search on the impact of environment on productivity brought up several studies on the impact of such things as temperature, visual comfort and view, and office layouts. Once such article cited two cases of note: Read the rest of this entry »
Top 10 Reasons Why the Recession Is Really Over!
November 11th, 2009 by Jeremy Lurey
When the recession set in late last year, I said to myself, “Oh, we’ll be fine. We have several major client engagements under way, and our clients aren’t pulling the plug on us yet.” Then in January, we signed a contract for another significant organizational change management effort, so I asked myself, “What’s everyone else doing wrong? We’re fine!” That’s when our largest clients reduced our level of support and in some cases didn’t even renew our contracts demonstrating to me exactly what this recession was all about. And that’s when I realized just why this was being called the worst global economic crisis since the invention of the telephone almost 140 years ago.
So what does this mean as we quickly approach year-end? NOTHING! It just means I spent a lot of time (and still do) listening to CNBC business updates and that we learned to run our business more efficiently this year getting more done with less. Those can always be beneficial exercises though. What would hurt us would be continuing to believe that we are stuck in a recession and can’t do anything about it. Well guess what… THE RECESSION IS OVER!
After conducting some informal market research the past few months, we developed the following Top 10 List of reasons why the recession is really over: Read the rest of this entry »
What Makes Ordinary Groups Extraordinary? An Interview with Geoffrey Bellman and Kathleen Ryan, authors of Extraordinary Groups
October 30th, 2009 by Jeremy Lurey
I recently had the honor and privilege of sitting down with Geoff Bellman and Kathleen Ryan, co-authors of the new book Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results. What a treat! Geoff has been a personal idol of mine ever since I started my doctoral program more than 15 years ago, and Kathleen may now be my newest favorite OD consultant. Whether I’ve known them long or short, both are tremendously caring and generous souls who are ever-so-graciously giving back to the field of OD these days just as they have given to their local Seattle community for many, many years.
So why do you, our blog readers, care about Geoff and Kathleen? Because they are two leading team performance experts who just published an eye-opening book… Read the rest of this entry »
The Future Of OD and the Role of Web 2.0: A Tipping Point?
October 19th, 2009 by Cris Hagen
Are Web 2.0 and social networking technologies the next “great app” in the field of OD to enable self-organizing systems and to build better working relationships in the organization?
If I were a betting man, I would bet that half of the attendees at this year’s OD Network conference would click “Delete” on their email application if this showed up in their mailbox. The other half (or less?) would be intrigued and hit the “scroll down” button to read more. Are we at the “cutting edge” of OD by talking about the role of Web 2.0 technologies instead of talking about “authenticity”, “power and affiliation needs”, or “process facilitation”? Or are we so far off base in introducing this vernacular into the lexicon of OD professionals that we will see it fall off the radar screen of OD and into the abyss of other “flash in the pan” concepts?
Are you a Level 5 leader? Jim Collins reminds us why you need to be
October 12th, 2009 by Samantha Lurey
As I mentioned in my other post on the Inc. Awards, we had the opportunity to hear Jim Collins speak at the Inc. 500/5000 conference in September. It was amazing to hear him speak about what makes good companies ‘great’. According to Jim, great companies are not made by accident, but by careful planning and flawless execution. Here’s what else he had to say during a Q&A session:
