I have spent much of my working life helping organisations develop and implement a more flexible approach to work and have strived to make sure that the needs of employees and employers are both accommodated. We have seen flexible working (hybrid working etc.) become mainstream in many organisations. I now find my attention is wavering … Read more
As we start to learn how to live and work with COVID 19 as an endemic, a debate is raging as to where and how work should be carried out. Several large corporations are entrenched on the “get back to the office” side of the debate. David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs and Elon … Read more
Make sure you have a dedicated workspace, somewhere with as few distractions as possible. Make sure you have all the equipment you need. Technology & a good broadband connection are essential, but so is a good chair. Develop a routine. Plan your schedule with daily & weekly to-do lists. Set your priorities & stick to … Read more
I came across something recently while reading Cal Newport’s book “Deep work” which attracted my interest. An architect from Chicago called David Dewane had developed an architectural concept which he called the Eudaimonia Machine, after a term used by Aristotle meaning “the highest human good”. The purpose of the Eudaimonia Machine was to lead people … Read more
Part 2: I ended part 1 of the myth of the perfect productivity system by highlighting research that concluded that collaboration drives performance and that the key to productive collaboration was purpose. So, in part 2, I thought I would look at what else has an impact on employee performance and consider potential strategies for measuring the performance … Read more
Part 1: Although many managers throughout history have tried to get their employees to work harder and produce more for less, it was not until 1911, when Fredrick W. Taylor published his book “The principles of scientific management”, that managers were presented with a systematic way of optimising production to deliver higher outputs. Ever since … Read more
Health officials have been warning us for months that Covid-19 isn’t about to go away anytime soon and instead, it’s much more likely to become endemic. Endemic means the constant presence of a disease, so we are going to have to learn to live in an endemic world. Moving from pandemic to endemic sounds like … Read more
I read an interesting article recently in Conversation (conversation.com) entitled “Why COVID 19 won’t kill cities”. The article is America centric but it got me thinking. Two experts, John Rennie Short and Michael J Orlando make a very constructive argument explaining that the demise of cities has been predicted before following the introduction of the … Read more