Archive for June, 2009

Archives for Perfect Job

Beyond the razzle-dazzle of beer bashes and company play days, “every company needs a signature experience that sets it apart.” That’s the thrust of a Harvard Business Review article called “What It Means to Work Here” by Tamara J. Erickson of the Concours Institute and Prof. Lynda Gratton of London Business School.

In other words, why spend the prime time of your life at Hyundai when you could be at Honda? Or at Novo Nordisk when you could be at Pfizer? True, it helps focus your decision when one company wants you and its competitor does not.

The authors state that “people also choose jobs-and, more important, become engaged with their work-on the basis of how well their preferences and aspirations mesh with those of the organization.” I’m not sold on that thesis, however. It is difficult at best to both assess corporate culture before we take a job and determine whether it meshes with our sensibilities, too.

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Archives for Social Media

When the scientific study hit the wires establishing that obesity spreads virally across large “social networks,” I figured that science was simply appropriating a popular cyberspace term.

After all, if obesity could spread across Facebook, or MySpace, science would have a larger problem on its hands than excessive girth. Are my contacts on Facebook really that susceptible to my suggestions? If so, I have a get-rich-slowly scheme to sell them.

Still, it’s obvious that some news and ideas spread virally over the Net; think about how many times you have spammed your friends or associates with jokes, links to articles, blog posts or videos. Before there was e-mail there were fax machines and (lawyer) jokes made the rounds pretty quickly, too.

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Archives for Branding You

They don’t teach this in management school, but learning how to build and maintain friendships in the workplace is a skill that can take you a long way in your career.

Just ask the founders of Google and Yahoo! But then again, when friends ‘break-up’ at work, whether it’s a legal partnership, two chefs at a bistro, or heads of a public company such as Disney, it can cause a permanent rift in the relationship. The truth is it’s risky to work with friends.

Yet it turns out that working with friends – or befriending co-workers – can enhance your job performance. Nearly two-thirds of employees believe that office productivity improves when co-workers are friendly outside of the office, according to a study by Accountemps, a staffing company for financial services professionals.

For many of us, friends are magnets that lure us to a new job and the ties that bind us when we might otherwise break away. Yet balancing the chemistry of friendships on and off the job is often a bit of an ordeal.

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Archives for Branding You

When a couple gets into a rut, they sometimes enter counseling to get a fresh, outsider’s perspective and, hopefully, reinvigorate the romance.

Similarly, a company seeking a surge of renovation can turn to the outside world by setting up a diverse team tasked with a particular focus.

Not slowed down by corporate bureaucracy, this multi-disciplinary group is, theoretically, agile enough to affect change and deliver innovation.

So contend the authors of a recent book, “X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate, and Succeed.” Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman who conducted their research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, say that we live in an “era of open innovation.”

They contend that more “radical innovation” comes from smaller organizations and that universities are increasingly forming partnerships with industry to market independent research.

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