Bosses Bully, managers measure, and leaders lift

Bosses Bully

Bosses force work to be done without consideration for the doers, affecting quality and timeliness.

Bosses

Managers observe, measure, and report about work but rarely contribute to the successful completion of that work.

Managers

Leaders lift their teams, obstacles, successes, and spirits. The one thing a good leader doesn't lift is themselves.

Leaders

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Thinking management.

In today’s topsy-turvy job market, a strange new thing is happening. Employers are increasingly grumbling about job seekers “ghosting” them. These job candidates just don’t show up for their scheduled interviews. And in some cases, new hires accept a job only to disappear.

Employers, unsurprisingly, do not like this. It’s rude, they say, and unprofessional. And sure, it is. But employers have been doing this to workers for years, and their hand-wringing didn’t start until the tables were turned.

If employers wanted to be treated better, they shouldn’t have spent the last three decades treating candidates with such little humanity. You can’t treat an entire class of people like crap for decades, strip them of rights and protections, and then be upset when we don’t show enough deference to the people asking us to beg for work.

Honestly I LOVE seeing potential employees treating employers the way employers have been treating their candidates for years! And then seeing the employers get all upset about it like they haven’t been behaving exactly the same way. … I really really hope that employers learn a lesson from this and start respecting job seekers a little more (although I’m not optimistic).

It remains to be seen how long these market conditions will last. But if getting ghosted helps employers better understand what they’ve been doing to job seekers for years, that’s a good thing. And if it reflects a real shift in power toward workers, that’s even better.

Turn about is fair play when it comes to ghosting in the hiring process.

career

Career

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

The Strange New Trend That’s Enraging Hiring Managers

We live in an information based society and for so many people the only results of our work is more intangible information. It is important we "produce" something tangible so we can appreciate the fruits of our labors. If our work and careers don't provide this physical component, our hobbies need to. The process of production and appreciation of the end result is what makes labor worthwhile.

The Importance Of Making Things

When is the last time you made something?

The power of making

The best definition of productivity is how much good work can you produce and how long does it take you? Some quality results take a long time, some a short time. But are you more productive because you churn out more in the same time? Have you evaluated the quality of your work?

Productivity Vs Velocity

The definition of productivity creates a false perspective as to how it should be measured.

Art Gelwicks on Oct 28

One of the features I frequently take advantage of is the option to add notes when capturing rather than having to wait until after you capture the content. At the top of the web clipper you can enter text that is saved when you save the article.  It’s a great way to annotate your information especially when you’re capturing multiple articles in a row.&nbsp;

Adding your own notes

Another of my favorite features is highlighting when clipping.  In the Web Clipper after selecting the Article option, go to the top of the clipper and click on the highlighter icon.  You can now highlight text in the clipped article before it is saved and the highlighting will be passed along when the article is saved.  I use this frequently because it gives me a chance to identify why I saved an article as well as key points of interest.&nbsp;

Immediate highlighting

One of the things I use OneNote most frequently for is to gather articles for reading and reference.  Reading content on the web has been tackled by apps like Pocket and Instapaper, but I wanted to the ability to keep everything in one place integrated with my other notes. Most applications don't allow this dual-functionality.…

writing

Reading & Writing

education

Learning & Education

Using OneNote as an Offline Reader

Taking the time to be aware of ourselves and working with our brains and how they want to work rather than pushing the “common wisdom” can go miles towards improving your productivity and reducing your stress. Give yourself permission to walk away when you and your brain are working at cross purposes.

Enough Is Enough 

I headed out to my workshop this evening to continue my ongoing project of purging, rearranging, and getting it into a general working condition after quite a period of neglect. Standing amid the mid-purge chaos I tried to jump in and get things going. Notice I said "tried". Success eluded me. Earlier in the week…

productivity

Productivity

Sometimes it’s better to just quit.

The best productivity platform for you will always be either an adaptation of an existing system or more commonly a composite of features from various other systems. Trying to adopt a system 100% will only result in disappointment with the results.

There is no one best productivity solution

Make a careful assessment of your challenges before you start. Do you procrastinate? Are you dealing with ADHD? Do you feel overworked? It's important to know what the problems are you're trying to fix to determine if your system will accomplish the goal.

Identify the pieces you need before you start to assemble

Pick one challenge to address first such as organizing your notes. Now look at why this is a problem. Is it accessibility? Relevance? Detail? Connection between ideas? Isolate the problems on your first step and then assess if the tool or system you have chosen will help mitigate that issue.

One step at a time

Once you've laid out your plan for the first step, revisit it from the perspective of "can you maintain it?" Will you become bored, overwhelmed, or is it overly complex? Any number of factors can derail your progress. Consider each one especially based on what you've encountered in the past.

Can you maintain?

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

business

Business

There is no one best way to be more productive.

The term is loaded but the phrase “best practices” can make a huge difference when it comes to creating long term supportable solutions vs. short term throwaway solutions.

Best Practices

For a Citizen Developer to build a long term solution they need to be cognizant of the fact they may not be the developer who supports their application a year from now. Even more common, if they’re a skilled citizen developer, they may be called to task to support someone else’s application. Dedicating time and process to proper documentation can make the difference between spending an hour troubleshooting a problem and spending a day.

Documentation

Organizationally, coordinating your citizen developers around design standards for solution types, business branding, and usability helps mitigate the chaos and encourages a shorter learning curve when users are working with solutions built by different developers.

Standards

While I've always been an advocate of spreading knowledge and skills to a broader audience especially within the business, the power of the Power Platform does raise concerns and considerations that must be addressed to avoid a chaos scenario of solutions.

computerscience

Computer Science

product

Product & Design

The Chaos of Citizen Developers

When researching the definition of “nap” this misconception continues. Synonyms include doze, catnap, drowse, drop off, nod off, and snooze, all of which also carry the negative connotations of unproductivity and weakness. For some reason we have, as a society, decided that if a person is not powering through all needs for rest and rejuvenation they are lazy therefore unreliable. This, using the old term brought new, is malarkey.

Need A Nap?

Is it all in the name? If “napping” had a fancier, more “click-baity” name such as “Stage 2 Rest Cycling” or “Short Duration Mental Refresh” would it be more palatable? I’m thinking it’s something far more basic than that. No matter what you call a nap, it comes down to accepting the fact that for a human to work at their optimal state regardless of what they are doing they need to be well-rested.

When Is A Nap Not A Nap?

There is no disputing the factual evidence that S2R (napping) has benefits. There is also no doubt we don’t provide ourselves the opportunities to reap these benefits because of the perceptual stigma around the name itself. So next time you feel like you need a nap and are afraid you’re going to get some grief, just tell them your’re testing a new productivity strategy called S2R.

S2R Is The New Napping

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com "Awww, do you need a nap?" We've all heard this said to a grumpy toddler at some point and time. Partially it comes from knowing that rest for them is good but also because it gives us some peace and quiet from their most recent tirade. What I wonder…

health

Health

Can’t take a nap? Try S2R instead.

Let’s start rethinking how we approach the office and treating it as it should be treated. It isn’t a place to go and spend a third of your life. It should be a place to go, meet with others, and accomplish things that you could not accomplish in other places and in other spaces.

The Office Shouldn't Be A Second Home

Being “in-office” should be treated the same way salespeople treat customer visits. Get the biggest bang for the buck when you’re on site, visit as many people as you can, and make sure that there’s some productive outcome from the travel and the time commitment. If we think about being in the office this way it forces us to plan out our days coordinate our schedules and make sure that the trip is worth the effort.

Being In Office Should Mean Something 

“Remote teams are for leaders, not for managers.”&nbsp;If you want to demonstrate effective leadership, do it in a way that doesn’t require you hovering over your people’s shoulders. Rarely is this productive beyond the manager trying to demonstrate they’re contributing something to the process. Encouraging people to work in the places they are most effective, rather than the ones most convenient for management, can make a significant positive influence on worker satisfaction.

Be A Leader Not A Manager

The term remote work is everywhere.  Former office-only workers now working from home, a new push from companies to get people back in the office, and confusion on behalf of people when it comes to what they want, have caused remote work to take on an entirely new meaning.  There are some times when meeting…