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.
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:
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.
Overcoming Knowledge Hoarding in the Workplace
Knowledge hoarding — when employees purposely keep critical knowledge to themselves — is a fairly common phenomenon found in companies of all sizes. It’s an uphill battle to create a culture of knowledge sharing if you don’t address knowledge hoarding head-on.
As our team grows from our initial product and engineering teams to content, marketing, customer support, and beyond, we’ve looked for ways to prevent knowledge hoarding from finding its way into our own company culture. To do this, we first had to identify why employees hoard knowledge.
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.)
Harvard Information for Employees
A strong communication plan will help managers set expectations and successfully orchestrate a diverse group of distributed employees. A thorough plan ensures that employees get what they need to stay connected with their team, customers, stakeholders, and the University.
Discussions about communication tools, protocols, and the ways in which people use these to interact with one another are ideal at the onset of a team approach to flexwork; however, anytime is a good time to establish or revisit a communication plan. A successful plan requires shared understanding and commitment so it’s important for all team members to participate when writing or revising a team communication plan.
Please also see CWD’s “Leading and Managing in a Hybrid Work Environment Toolkit” which includes more in-depth and how-to advice for building skills for a culture of fluid communication in the context of flexwork. Teams should develop a communication plan that addresses:
Stasi
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006): Context: Set in East Germany, this film follows a Stasi officer tasked with surveilling a playwright. Illustration: The Stasi’s internal culture is characterized by unemotional, objective reporting and evaluation. Feedback about performance is delivered in a cold, formal manner, with little regard for personal feelings. The film’s tone and dialogue reflect a clear separation between professional duty and personal emotion.
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.
How To Break Down Team Silos At Work
As organizations have grown bigger and bigger, so have their divisions— both literally and figuratively. Specific functions have become decentralized and delegated. As such, the individual components of these organizations have become increasingly specialized and discrete in the form of team silos. Sounds good, right? Not exactly.
There’s one thing that organizations need more than specialization: collaboration and team building.
The hallmark of all successful organizations is effective communication and an atmosphere of collaboration. But team silos, or isolated teams, are formed when the groups work alone rather than together. This reduces productivity and efficiency and slows down progress.
Team building is vital to increasing operational efficiency. If individual silos are not broken down, a unified, productive, and communicative team can’t be built. We know it’s hard to bring teams together and break down team silos across an org, so here are some tips to help.
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.”