Quotes

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts. Perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” — John Steinbeck

“Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.” ― Dale Carnegie

“The object of power is power.” — George Orwell, 1984

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” — George Orwell, 1984

“Don’t trust children with edge tools. Don’t trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Get things done

Getting Things Done by David Allen is one of the staples of personal and professional productivity. Getting Things Done, or GTD for short has been on the top sellers’ list for more than a decade (it first came out in 2001) and with good reason.

David Allen has managed to create a system that you can use both at work, at school and at home – it is almost universal. The book though is rather complex and lengthy and you can get lost in the nitty-gritty of the it all.

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:

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. 

Five Strategies To Improve Communication With Team Members

Even though almost 75% of employers rate collaboration and teamwork as “very important,” according to data from Queens University of Charlotte, 39% of employees think that people in their organization don’t collaborate enough.

Improved communication between team members in the workplace often brings fantastic results, including:

• Smoother team building

• Greater agility

• Enhanced focus

• Efficient performance

• Reduced workload

In light of those benefits, it’s easy to agree that workplace collaboration is critical. But achieving these results can be difficult. Here are five tips to streamline communications in the digital age:

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.

Don’t hoard information

Is it just poor workflow or is it willful information hoarding! A good friend emailed me recently about the concept of information hoarding at work. I write and speak extensively about individuals who sabotage coworker performance and productivity at work.

The act of withholding information is a common tactic used by difficult and uncooperative employees. This article outlines examples of information and power hoarding, both aimed at maintaining the offending employee’s informal power at work.

5 Signs

Information hoarding, whether intentional or not, can be a costly problem. In fact, International Data Corp estimates that Fortune 500 companies lose at least $31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge across teams and individuals. When employees don’t share their knowledge, teams miss opportunities to collaborate, individuals waste time trying to track down information, and organizations fail to preserve expertise and tacit knowledge when people leave the company.

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