People across the United States are taking steps to help one another amid the coronavirus pandemic.
From companies donating masks and ventilators to hospitals, to everyday people helping their neighbors, there are countless examples of people trying to do the right thing during an extraordinarily difficult time.
The Hill is keeping track of them here.
The 12 Habits Of Highly Collaborative Organizations
When it comes to the future of work and collaboration I’ve worked with and researched hundreds of companies. Collaboration is indeed a top priority for many business leaders but knowing what makes organizations successful can be a tricky thing.
After all no two companies are like and their strategies and technologies can be quite different. In addition collaboration initiatives come from different departments with different budgets, they have different uses cases and corporate cultures, and different approaches, goals, and measures of success.
So if there is so much variety here then how do we know what makes organizations successful? The answer lies in chess.
Making collaboration across functions a reality
Fast-changing global markets put a premium on simplifying processes radically and breaking through silos.
Companies have long struggled to break down silos and boost cross-functional collaboration—but the challenge is getting more acute. The speed of market change requires a more rapid adaptation of products and services, while customers increasingly expect an organization to present them with a single face.
Even well-established multinationals routinely fail to manage operations end to end. The result: interactions with customers are sluggish; complex, customized products are hard to create on time and on budget; and blocked lines of communication make new sales and distribution channels difficult to navigate.
The basic principles for improving performance—imposing stretch targets from the center, empowering cross-functional teams, standardizing processes, tightening up execution—are mostly familiar. But making these things happen is a different matter. In many companies, ownership of processes and information is fragmented and zealously guarded, roles are designed around parochial requirements, and the resulting internal complexity hinders sorely needed cross-business collaboration.
What’s more, in our experience, companies that apply traditional solutions (such as lean and business-process reengineering) either exhaust their managers with efforts to rework every process across business units or, by contrast, focus too narrowly within functions.
Our observations of 25 companies in a wide range of industries in Europe, Asia, and North America have led us to conclude that perspiration is as important as inspiration in addressing these challenges.
Here’s the story of how two companies launched new approaches successfully. One needed to focus narrowly to fix a critical process that compromised its core business. The other, swamped by the complexity of its processes, required a broad-based transformation.
5 Ways to Break Down Silos
Farm silos are designed to store large amounts of grain while keeping different materials completely separated. In business, organizational silos have the same effect: They prevent resources and information from being shared among departments and teams.
No company sets out with the intention of building organizational silos. But by becoming familiar with the warning signs and taking action quickly when they start to form, you can help your company keep information and resources flowing freely.
Inside Outside
Americans make less of a distinction between their core team and teams in ever wider organisational concentric circles. They believe that information fundamentally belongs to the entire company.
U.S. Cities With the Friendliest Neighbors
From Florida to Hawaii, these cities take care of each other.
Do you have good neighbors? While some people out there barely see or speak to the people dwelling in the next house or apartment, there are some places in the U.S. where community and neighborliness is paramount.
A recent Housing and Urban Development study showed that while neighborhood crime rates are lower in the U.S. than they’ve ever been before, strong community bonds are closely associated with safe neighborhoods where people have a sense of community well-being.
So, where can you find these safe, friendly neighborhoods? A storage company called Neighbor, which is basically the Airbnb of storage companies, recently analyzed and compiled a list of the top 25 cities that pride themselves on looking out for each other, doing favors for one another, and generally acting like good neighbors in a traditional sense.
The 28 friendliest neighborhoods in U.S. cities
Travel is rooted in hospitality—in a welcoming gesture, a friendly smile, an accommodating spirit.
In search of these qualities, we’ve developed—with the help of our data-crunching partners at Resonance Consultancy—this unique index of the 28 friendliest city neighborhoods in the United States.
Whether embracing its immigrant roots (San Jose’s Japantown) or celebrating inclusion (Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen), an open-minded, open-hearted neighborhood can make travelers feel at home. This ultimate list offers starting points to explore American cities: enclaves full of places to delve into, people to meet, and enough bonhomie to make you want to return again and again. (See our list of best smaller U.S. cities.)
A half-century after ‘Mister Rogers’ debut, 5 facts about neighbors in U.S.
2019 – More than 50 years after the first episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Fred Rogers, the creator and host of the popular children’s TV show, is being memorialized on the silver screen. A forthcoming Hollywood movie, in addition to a documentary last year, are bringing renewed attention to Rogers and his familiar refrain, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
A Pew Research Center survey in 2018 explored several aspects of community life in the United States, including neighborly relations. Amid fresh interest in Rogers and his show, here are five facts about how Americans interact with their neighbors, based on the Center’s survey:
Why Volunteerism Is an Essential American Value
The commitment to volunteerism has been a hallmark of American civic life since the country’s founding. It was Benjamin Franklin who formed the first volunteer fire department in 1736, and many American militias during the Revolutionary War were comprised of volunteers. Some of the most well-known American charitable organizations, such as the YMCA and the American Red Cross, were founded in the 19th century.
Many American youth today are exposed to volunteering through religious youth groups or scouting organizations, and many large companies arrange volunteering opportunities for their employees. Nearly every church, school, or local community center has volunteers who feed the poor, teach, tend to the sick and elderly, support political causes, coach kids, or rescue animals, among numerous other causes. Not only does volunteering allow people to help others through direct action, but it fosters an incredible sense of community as well.
Alexis de Tocqueville on American volunteerism
“Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.”