The ironic thing about the Miyawaki system is that it’s wildly unreasonable, illogical and inappropriate. But it seems like we live in wildly absurd times where common sense is no longer common. Let’s do a little thought experiment: a Yemeni ecologist named Mr Mian Wali studies his local ecology over decades and arrives at a ‘system’ – a formula – that enables him and his team to easily restore their degraded ecosystems. Could you imagine an Indian businessman bringing Mr Mian Wali’s ‘system’ to India to help us restore our degraded landscapes with Yemeni effectiveness?

We don’t mean any offence to Yemen, but this just sounds ridiculous. Then why have we let another Indian businessman convince us that we need a Japanese system to grow our native forests? Perhaps because we’re historically amenable towards Japanese speed and efficiency. (Not sure why either of these has any bearing on ecology.) Perhaps it’s an indicator of how deeply divorced contemporary Indian culture is from nature. Perhaps, the modern Indian mind is denser than Miyawaki plantations themselves?

What’s clear is that many government agencies, NGOs and hubris-filled youth (like our earlier selves) have latched onto it as an easy way to make money and plant trees without needing to understand the nuances of ecology and biodiversity at all – and cause lots of damage in the process! How are we going to stop this Miyawaki mania? By slowing down and actually forming a connection with plants, landscape and local communities, but nobody seems to have the time for this, for such are the times we live in.

How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Remote working can be difficult for early-career workers, who need opportunities to learn from older colleagues, network with people in their industry, and figure out the internal politics of their workplace.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Maintaining access to an office also helps ensure that the financial burden of work stays with employers.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">There’s this new realization and awareness among employees of how you work best, what’s important in life, and how you want to spend your time i.e. self-determination. </li></ul>

Complexities of Remote Working

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Remote Work

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Career

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Personal Development

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Corporate Culture

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Teamwork

There’s a Perfect Number of Days to Work From Home, and It’s 2

<ul><li>Lack of communication about the purpose of their job. </li><li>Lack of meaningful interactions among peers i.e. transactional workplace.</li><li>Willingness to exit an uncomfortable workplace even without lining up for the next job. </li><li>Not listening to the people. </li><li>Not including your employees in the decision making. </li><li>Not providing additional levels within an employee grade to recognise good work.</li></ul>

What are some of the trends that are prompting employees to leave jobs?

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Access Denied

<ul><li>The trick, as strange as it may sound, is to make people believe the opposite opinion was their own to begin with.</li><li>The difference is that when faced with the false-feedback people are free from the motives that normally lead them to defend themselves or their ideas from external criticism. Instead they can consider the benefits of the alternative position.</li></ul>

What can we do to make people open their minds?

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Problem Solving

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Communication

How Political Opinions Change

AI-powered <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/importance-of-investing-in-employees.html?id=us:2el:3dp:wsjspon:awa:WSJCIO:2022:WSJFY22">opportunity marketplaces</a> that divide work into tasks, projects, or roles that can be matched with people from anywhere in the organization.

Match opportunities with talent

To develop its COVID-19 vaccine in record time, for example, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca mobilized employees into cross-functional tiger teams rather than according to functional expertise. But it also tapped its ecosystem, collaborating with academia and regulatory agencies and employing new ways of working.

Make cross-functional teams 

When hiring, consider such segments as alumni, workers who have taken career breaks to be caregivers, people in untapped geographies who can work remotely, the long-term unemployed, immigrants and refugees, and those with physical disabilities or neurodiversity challenges

Hire creatively 

<ul><li>When employees are empowered to make decisions about where and how they could work, engagement and productivity increase.</li><li>That should also involve training managers for hybrid work so they focus on outcomes, not in-office face time.</li></ul>

Empower employees with where and why of work

Talent is one of the biggest issues facing C-suite executives today. Leaders should not only understand the big shifts at play but also reimagine workplace systems, policies, and culture to deal with the current crisis and withstand future shocks.

From ‘the Great Resignation’ to ‘the Great Reimagination’

<ul><li>Relaxation of zoning laws</li><li>Investment in rail. </li><li>Approaching the development of poorer neighbourhoods as gradual and in-situ in nature.</li><li>Using data to plan resources and manage the ageing population.  </li></ul>

Key Steps Japan took to Make Tokyo More Liveable

Surprisingly, the world’s biggest city is also one of its most liveable | Special report

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Society, Arts & Culture

The big city that is also pleasant to live in

<ul><li>For years the retail mantra given to frontline workers has been“The customer is always right … which means you are wrong.” Take the abuse. </li><li>People who know that their boss will side with the customer, even when that customer is rude or wrong, quickly lose trust in leadership. </li><li>Eroding trust further by prioritizing the most outrageous customer demands over the mental health of your people is a fast way to drive them out the door. No one wants to work a demeaning, demanding job where their manager doesn’t trust their judgment. </li></ul>

Customer is Always Right Culture

<ul><li>Don’t minimize how your employees feel</li><li>Empower your people to say no—politely to customers</li><li>Focus on metrics that support long-term growth  </li></ul>

What can be done right?

<ul><li>if an employee tells you about an upsetting interaction with a customer, avoid minimizing their feelings by calling it “a little annoying” or “part of the job.” </li><li>Much better is to reflect your employee’s emotions back to them, saying something like “I understand that you’re upset this happened, and rightfully so—no one should be allowed to take their emotions out on you like that."</li><li>And then go a step further: "Here’s what I’m going to do to prevent this from happening again.” </li><li>Underestimating someone’s feelings tends to be far costlier than overestimating them.</li></ul>

Don’t minimize how your employees feel

<ul><li>Rather than forcing your people to say yes to a series of one-off, time-consuming requests, train them on how to clearly and kindly explain why they can’t accommodate certain asks. </li><li>Sometimes doing what’s best for the long-term health of your company means parting ways with a customer that doesn’t match your vision and values—and making room for the customers that do.</li></ul>

Empower your people to say no—politely to customers

<ul><li>Define your company’s employee-focused metrics for success, and then track them. </li><li>How are managers improving, as rated by their direct reports? </li><li>Do your people see opportunities for growth? Do they plan to stick around? </li><li>Studies show that employee satisfaction and retention rates are two of the best indicators of a company’s long-term health—and overall customer satisfaction.</li></ul>

Focus on metrics that support long-term growth  

serving customers should not be at the cost of losing your top talent...

Difficult customers are nothing new, but 2021 takes the cake. Over the past year, customers have routinely made headlines for verbally (and sometimes physically) attacking frontline workers over long wait times, product shortages, COVID safety precautions, and other reasons that are virtually always

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Entrepreneurship

Why “the customer is always right” is bad for business - and what you should do instead 


<ul><li>Managers should map each team member’s work back to the bigger picture of why what they do matters to the world. </li><li>When assigning tasks, managers should consistently outline answers to: Why is this project important? How will it impact others? How does it fit into the company’s broader mission?</li><li>CommonSpirit, the largest nonprofit health system in America, starts important meetings with “reflections,” stories or videos recognizing how hard it is to be a health care worker in a pandemic while also connecting to all the good they do for their patients and communities. </li></ul>

 Make work purpose driven

<ul><li>To help hybrid teams succeed, managers should clearly outline the milestones they’d like their reports to hit — and then let them figure out how to get there</li></ul>

Trust your people more than feels comfortable

<ul><li>For example, if team members are eager for opportunities to learn and their manager would like to build mentorship abilities, we might deliver a nudge to the manager ahead of their next 1:1 that offers recommendations for how to have a growth-focused conversation with a report.</li></ul>

Learn in the small moments. Send people — and yourself — nudges

<ul><li>Encourage managers to take notice of who often dominates the conversation in meetings or receives the most recognition for a project’s success. Make the evaluation criteria for projects as clear as possible: The more explicit the rubric, the less room for bias.</li></ul>

Include everyone. Take a long hard look in the mirror.

for leaders who want to create a suitable remote working culture. 

Some of the pre-pandemic rules still apply — but not all of them.

5 New Rules for Leading a Hybrid Team

<ul><li>Remote work lacks the distractions, annoyances, and soft abuses that come with co-workers and middle managers.</li><li> They don’t have to commute </li><li>Can be evaluated mostly on their actual work rather than on the optics-driven albatross of “office culture”. </li></ul>

Why do people like working from home?

<ul><li>When we are all in the same physical space, we are oftentimes evaluated not on the execution of our role but on our diplomacy—by which I mean our ability to kiss up to the right people rather than actually being a decent person.</li><li>It’s much harder to be a jerk over Slack, email, and text when someone can screenshot it and send it to HR (<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion">or to a journalist</a>).</li></ul>

The necessity to be nice

<ul><li>The anti-remote crowd seems to believe that the responsibility of a 9-to-5 employee isn’t simply the work but the appearance, optics, and ceremony of the work.</li><li>Making people work late is much harder when you can’t trap them in one place with free food, a Ping-Pong table, a kegerator, or laundry services—benefits that you champion instead of monetary compensation.</li></ul>

Why are people still compelled to come back to offices?

to understand why organisations compel their employees back to work despite enough evidence against it. 

Like it or not, the way we work has already evolved.

Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future

<ul><li>Your boss’s schedule is your schedule. </li><li>E<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bosses-still-arent-sure-remote-workers-have-hustle-11621771201?mod=article_inline">mployees with the most in-person access</a> to leaders will get the first crack at promotions.</li><li>Your success should be coordinated with everyone else.</li><li>Thursdays emerged as the most popular day for people to come in.</li><li>Scheduling 15-minute coffee breaks with the boss and other senior managers each week - "Hey I’d love to have 15 minutes with you just make sure I’m aligning my thinking with your goals for the company."</li></ul>

Adjuting to A Hybrid Workplace

Important for those who would be back in the office and are looking to improve their visibility at work. 

Thursday may be the new Monday when it comes to strategizing what days in the office will get you the most face time with senior leaders

How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart

There’s a Perfect Number of Days to Work From Home, and It’s 2

Access Denied

How Political Opinions Change

From ‘the Great Resignation’ to ‘the Great Reimagination’

Gautam jayasurya