Make The Most Of A Slow Period At Work

You've just wrapped up a big project, and it's going to be a week or two before the next one ramps up. What should you do with the free time on your calendar? While this kind of lull between assignments can feel disconcerting, or even anxiety producing, it's actually a great opportunity to recalibrate, reorganize your priorities — or just to relax. Here's how to make the most of this slow period. First, think about ways that you could challenge yourself. For example, could you take a short online class or pursue a hobby that you rarely have time for? You might also consider using the time to help others by volunteering in your local community or mentoring a junior colleague. This also can be a good time to finish those little, annoying tasks that you never seem to get to. Knocking those nagging things off your to-do list is an easy way to feel productive and keep your forward momentum going. Don’t waste a good slowdown. They’re rare in today’s go-go-go world, and when this one’s gone, you’ll probably wish you had some time to spare.

This tip is adapted from “You’re Between Assignments at Work. What Do You Do?,” by Anne Sugar

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Bull / Bear Ratio

What Is The Bull/Bear Ratio? The bull/bear ratio (sometimes known as the bull-bear spread) is a market-sentiment indicator published weekly by the financial data provider Investor's Intelligence, which uses information polled directly from market professionals. Information is taken from investment advisors who work directly with the general investing public to help them with financial planning and investment portfolios.

Understanding The Bull/Bear Ratio :- Market sentiment refers to the overall attitude of investors toward a particular security or financial market. It is the feeling or tone of a market, or its crowd psychology, as revealed through the activity and price movement of the securities traded in that market. In broad terms, rising prices indicate bullish market sentiment, while falling prices indicate bearish market sentiment.

The Bull/Bear index reflects the aggregate sentiments of financial advisors and planners who deal daily with the market. It reflects how well-informed professionals feel about the stock market and how they likely advise their clients to invest based on those feelings.

A reading above "1.0" indicates that more advisors are bullish about the market; where bullish refers to investor sentiment that believes the that stock market will soon go up. A reading below "1.0" means a larger proportion of advisors are bearish and think the market will pull back in the near future.

Bull/Bear Ratio = Bearish Investment Advisors / Bullish Investment Advisors​​ ​​

How To Use The Bull/Bear Ratio :- In order to form the bull/bear ratio, investment advisors are polled weekly by Investor's Intelligence. Investor's Intelligence is a service that publishes daily market indicators and other things people can use to day trade. The bull/bear ratio is a long-standing indicator that shows shifting sentiments of market professionals such as financial advisors.

A financial advisor's sentiment is going to affect the way they communicate with their clients and may even switch the way they advise their clients to invest, affecting the movement of the market. As the bull/bear ratio rises and falls, it indicates the portion of the investment community that is bullish- or expecting the market to go up — versus the portion that is bearish — or expects the market to fall.

Thanks to Adam Hayes / Investopedia / DotDash Publishing
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bullbearratio.asp?utm_source=term-of-the-day&utm_campaign=daily-native&utm_term=22296996&utm_medium=email

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The Science Behind Gratitude At Work

The Act Of Being Grateful Can Help Employees To Focus On What Matters, According To Behavioral Experts …

The holiday season has kicked off for many – with the hope that the festivities and year-end incentives at work will book-end what has been a challenging and, at times, heartbreaking 2020.

While it may seem nearly impossible to find things to be thankful for in the past year, the very act of being grateful can help the mind stay focused on what matters, behavioral experts recommend.

Most companies have reward and recognition programs in place as a way of saying ‘thank you’ to staff and keeping them motivated.

But in a year of unprecedented change, handing out ‘Employee of the Year’ awards would mean nothing to employees if their boss fails to understand the hardship they’ve been through and their commitment to stay on track.

For HR leaders, it’s crucial to understand the science behind gratitude. After all, it’s the bedrock of an authentic employee appreciation programme.

Three Levels Of Gratitude At Work

In a new study published in the Academy of Management Review, experts pointed out how gratitude in the workplace exists on multiple levels.

1) Episodic Gratitude :- Episodic gratitude is seen in unique heart-warming moments, such as when a person receives a gift and feels appreciated by another person. It comes from experiencing specific events.

“Gratitude at this level is an emotion in the classic sense – an affective phenomenon that persists for a brief period of time,” wrote the research team led by Ryan Fehr, an associate professor at the University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business.

“Low-intensity feelings of gratitude might arise from a small favor from a co-worker or customer. High-intensity gratitude might instead arise when a co-worker prevents an employee from getting fired or saves a project at the last minute,” they said.

The researchers believe employee appreciation programs increase episodic gratitude.

2) Persistent Gratitude :- Persistent gratitude at the individual level occurs when a person exhibits a “stable tendency to feel grateful” in a particular setting. When people witness examples of episodic gratitude frequently enough, they tend to feel more positive and evaluate life at work with this attitude of gratitude.

3) Collective Gratitude :- Collective gratitude refers to individual or subjective experiences of gratitude converging into a “shared organizational-level phenomenon”.

“Once formed, collective gratitude acts as part of the social context of the organization,” the researchers said. “In other words, it becomes a defining feature of the organization itself, shaping the way employees construe the organization and their place within it.”

This is why the top employers invest in a positive workplace culture: prosocial behaviors are established through constant interaction with colleagues until these behaviors become the norm.

Why Some Employees Go Above And Beyond

Even in the era of remote work, interaction between colleagues, or between managers and their direct reports, offers opportunities not only to express gratitude but also feel appreciated at work.

“Employees frequently go above and beyond their assigned tasks by helping each other and engaging in proactive, prosocial behavior. These extra-role efforts are typically aimed at improving their colleagues’ lives and the functioning of the organization,” the researchers said.

“However, in fast-paced and performance-driven work environments, beneficiaries may not always take the time to express gratitude, leaving benefactors feeling as if their actions are overlooked and ignored. From an organizational practice perspective, one path to addressing this issue and fostering gratitude is through employee appreciation programs.”

These initiatives, the researchers said, are “most likely to foster gratitude when they focus on praising employees and teams for their effort and perseverance”.

The caveat, however, is that they can backfire when they “single out one employee’s performance at the expense of others”.

HR leaders play a crucial role in cultivating this culture of gratitude and appreciation, but they must do so in an authentic manner.

“By making gratitude a fundamental part of the employee experience, leaders and managers can leverage the benefits of gratitude for employees and the organization as a whole,” the researchers suggested.

Thanks to Rachel Ranosa / HRD Human Resource Director / HCAMag
https://www.hcamag.com/asia/specialisation/reward-recognition/the-science-behind-gratitude-at-work/240284?utm_source=GA&utm_medium=20201220&utm_campaign=HRDAW-Newsletter-20201221&utm_content=B247FA2E-1754-4744-BFB2-7E9157654F96&tu=B247FA2E-1754-4744-BFB2-7E9157654F96

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Determine Your Company’s Purpose With Your Constituents

"What are we here for?" This question is essential for every leader to answer if you want to keep people engaged and focused, especially in times of change and uncertainty. So how can you provide a motivating answer to this question? It can't come from you and your fellow executives alone. Determining your company's purpose should involve employees, customers, suppliers, and members of the communities you serve. So convene these parties, perhaps in small focus groups, and ask them what they need and expect of your organization now (acknowledging that their answer may have changed over the past year). Then turn their feedback into a narrative of what success — and failure — looks like. Now is not a time to cling to an old plan. Instead, galvanize your constituencies to shape your company's purpose and future. When you take a collaborative approach, it's more legitimate, more motivating, and more likely to subvert the status quo.

This Tip Is Adapted From "How The Best Leaders Answer 'What Are We Here For?'," By Margaret Heffernan

Thanks to Margaret Heffernan / Harvard Business Review / The Management Tip Of The Day
https://hbr.org/2020/10/how-the-best-leaders-answer-what-are-we-here-for?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=mtod_notactsubs

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Document Your Team’s Unwritten Rules

Every workplace has unwritten rules — the unstated cultural and emotional norms that dictate what's acceptable on your team or in your company. But is everyone aware of them? Do they know if it's okay to turn off their video during a Zoom meeting? Or to go for a walk in the middle of the day? During stressful times it can be helpful for everyone to know exactly what your norms are. So write them down. Set aside time for you and your team to brainstorm an "It's okay to…" list to clarify the small uncertainties that can add unnecessary stress. Your list can include things like "It's okay to say you don't understand a process," or, "It's okay to have quiet days." If your company has moved to remote work during the pandemic, you might want to refresh your list, including things like, "It's okay to shift your hours to take care of family commitments," or "It's okay to block off calendar time for focused work." Documenting these norms is a simple exercise that has positive benefits for new, tenured, and future employees — and allows you to reinforce your culture even when the nature of work changes.

Thanks to Liz Fosslien & Mollie West Duffy / Harvard Business Review / The Management Tip Of The Day
https://hbr.org/2020/10/write-down-your-teams-unwritten-rules?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=mtod_notactsubs

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The Road To Successful Change Is Lined With Trade-Offs

Rather Than Trying To Convince People Your Change Initiative Is The Right One, Invite Them To Talk Openly About What It Might Take To Implement It: The Good, The Bad, And The Frustrating.

At one Fortune 500 insurance company, the IT team had noticed an uptick in quality issues, delays, and dissatisfaction among project sponsors. In response to these unsettling trends, the chief information officer (CIO) decided to adopt a standard software development methodology and replicable project management practices. The intended benefits of this shift — higher quality and reliability — were attractive, but the trade-offs were daunting. Because they would no longer have the license to customize process and standards, project managers would need to give up independence and creativity. Coders would have to make similar sacrifices, as well as face increased oversight through peer reviews.

To address these concerns, the CIO asked a cross-functional group to consider two questions: If the division adopted the new framework, what would the organization gain? And equally important, what would it lose? Participants were invited to weigh the proposed change for themselves and to consider it from every angle — including the reasons the initiative might not work. They brainstormed solutions to potential project roadblocks. These discussions helped build support and diminish the likelihood that people would retrench when challenged by the inevitable costs, frustrations, and hard work of change. In the end, the new methodology and practices were adopted in half the time recommended to achieve the goal, embedded in the company’s culture, and recognized for their contributions to customer satisfaction and project quality.

These were not your typical “socializing” conversations, intended to make people feel included in decisions that have already been made. Instead, these dialogues reflected a departure from many of the current norms for change management. Traditionally, leaders have started with the belief that the change they have launched is patently right. Its merits are not in question, they believe; at most, it might need minor tweaks. With this stance, the work of change becomes convincing people and overcoming their resistance, and all too often, box-checking exercises take the place of frank discussion.

Yet we have found that the most enduring change initiatives — those that drive real results — are based on leaders’ assumption that they are seeing only part of the picture and thus need to learn more. These leaders ask hard questions and engage in trade-offs as early as possible, talking with those who raise concerns not to gain their compliance, but to improve, refine, and pressure test the proposed change.

No Easy Answers

We are living in a historic moment, one in which trade-offs are central to many of our discussions: Leaders in the public and private sector are weighing the potential costs (economic, medical, and psychological) of opening institutions while COVID-19 is still spreading against the potential costs of staying closed. For many of the hard questions these leaders are asking, there are no good answers. But decisions still need to be made.

When leaders launch an initiative, their ability to achieve “both/and” is not yet proven. By both/and, we mean identifying a solution that moves beyond the historical limits of an either/or trade-off, an idea advanced by the polarity management methodology of management thinker and author Barry Johnson. For instance, companies used to choose either slow, costly, data-driven decisions or fast, intuitive judgment calls. But the use of advanced analytics now allows companies to make real-time decisions that are data-driven.

Yet when leaders assume their answer is the answer, they tend to approach change as they would a political campaign — heavy on slogans and focused on numerical targets akin to contributions and votes. The process can feel forced; people are engaged solely to be converted to the leader’s “side,” rather than to participate in a dialogue about the potential implications of the plan. Leaders speak, but don’t listen. Or they assume that a lack of feedback reflects agreement and acceptance among their constituents.

Success under this approach is typically measured by increases in compliance (“40 percent of staff have logged on to the new ERP system”) and decreases in resistance (“the number of employees indicating the new ERP system will help make their work more effective has increased by 30 percent since last quarter”). Leaders reward those who quickly conform, not realizing that these conversions often represent superficial commitments, not true allegiance or even an accurate understanding of the new way. And because hard questions are minimized, teams may comply with a change that won’t work once it gets underway.

For employees, the pressure to change without truly understanding or committing to the initiative is an unfortunate fact of organizational life. People become used to the expectation that they will limit independent thinking and suspend disbelief, regardless of the lessons of their prior experience. If employees have a few questions, that is usually acceptable, but more can invite censure or ridicule, or, in the worst cases, can be career damaging, even if such questions represent legitimate critiques or sound ideas for improvement.

Consider the case of a leader of an accounting services business who created a consolidated national office to replace a collection of smaller state units. Although the new structure would save on overhead, the company’s services were heavily influenced by state regulations. Employees with the expertise needed to work in their state office could now be assigned to a case anywhere in the country. Many would lack the knowledge needed to do their job effectively — a concern immediately raised by employees when the plan was announced. But the leader was dismissive, instead telling people to stop “harping on the negative.” Those who raised the issue again could tell they were at risk of being branded as resisters. One even remarked that “it was like a cult”; she felt forced to conform or face social and professional isolation.

In the end, the new national structure struggled to deliver for customers in states where employees were not well-versed in local regulations, in ways the resisters had predicted and hoped to avoid. Imagine if the leader had asked, “How might we consolidate into a national structure, but still ensure customers benefit from the regulatory knowledge each of you has developed over time?” Instead of resisting, his team would have been brainstorming how to make the idea work. And instead of failing to meet expectations, they could have been delivering excellent service at scale.

Avoid The Temptation To Rush In

Leaders should borrow an important concept from the project management world: Go slow to go fast. There is often a rush to dive in at the beginning of a project, to start getting things done quickly and to feel a sense of accomplishment. This desire backfires when stakeholders are overlooked, plans are not validated, and critical conversations are ignored. Instead, project managers are advised to go slow — to do the work needed up front to develop momentum and gain speed later in the project.

The same idea helps reframe notions about how to lead organizational change successfully. Instead of doing the conceptual work quickly and alone, leaders must slow down the initial planning stages, resist the temptation and endorphin rush of being a “heroic” leader solving the problem, and engage people in frank conversations about the trade-offs involved in change. This does not have to take long — even just a few days or weeks. The key is to build the capacity to think together and to get underlying assumptions out in the open.

Leaders must do more than just get the conversation started. They also need to keep it going, often in the face of significant challenges. For example, one of the authors once worked with a division of a Fortune 50 high-tech firm that was going through a period of turbulence. During one nine-month period, the unit was reorganized six times, and each time, another internal technical function was added to the group. The problem was that no one could explain the logic of all the additions. The division began calling itself the “Island of Misfit Toys” — where all the odd, hard-to-place functions were collected.

After first trying the political campaign approach with her team — doing presentations about the burning platform and targeting those who needed to have their concerns assuaged — and getting nowhere, the unit’s leader decided to change course. Over a team dinner one evening, she asked point-blank whether they should give up on making sense of the mergers. The question stunned her colleagues, but also ultimately united them. As they went around the table, they committed to finding a shared purpose, and they were also able to discern a common thread behind the mergers. Each of the added groups had a similar competence they had brought to a range of projects, a similarity that hadn’t been obvious before. The team refocused on that competence, then began seeking new teams to merge into their function.

The leader started the conversation with a challenging question, and this is critical. The questions need to be a little risky, and the context needs to invite people to talk safely about difficult issues. Change champions need to draw out others’ opinions about the reasons their hunch won’t work as a starting point for problem-solving and design. By treating the potential downsides and limitations of an idea as legitimate, rational concerns, people can work together to design solutions that both achieve intended goals and preserve what the organization wishes to safeguard while building commitment to implementation. Leaders may ask, for example: Is this a distraction or something that can truly make a difference? What will we have to do to make this work? What might be the unintended consequences if we succeed?

Engage With The “Other Side”

So-called resisters have a point. Opposing views often have clear, important messages that leaders would do well to heed. The people who hold these views may be the ones who most vividly see the potential losses or risks associated with the initiative.

Organizational change expert Rick Maurer explains, “There [aren’t] ‘resisters’ out there just waiting to ruin our otherwise perfect intervention. People resist in response to something. The people resisting probably don’t see it as resistance; they see it as survival.” Critical voices are important and ultimately essential in breaking through superficiality and developing the thinking needed to wrestle with trade-offs successfully. Many times, in side conversations, people have told us stories about speaking up out of a sense of accountability, realism, or integrity.

When change leaders gloss over unintended consequences and contradictory perspectives, they lose the opportunity to capitalize on the tension between views that can lead to unexpected and valuable insights. They sacrifice the chance to achieve real commitment from the people whose job it will be to implement the change.

Methods such as skillful dialogue encourage groups to slow down conversations and truly listen. The Lewis Deep Democracy approach takes it further. Developed in South Africa to help corporations recover from the effects of apartheid, dismantle embedded racist systems, and model the new, democratic nation, Deep Democracy works with what can be called a strict, no-interrupting, one-side-at-a-time policy.

This technique helped one behavioral health organization decide how to change its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). A choice had emerged among the senior team. They could make diversity a top-level priority or they could embed it into everyone’s day-to-day work. Both approaches addressed the underlying imperative to improve, but each also came with trade-offs and potential drawbacks.

Rather than alternating arguments, the team dove into each side in depth. Some members of the senior team believed that DEI should be part of the strategic agenda. The discussion started with supporters articulating their perspective that the organization’s commitment to diversity should be shared with the world as a top-level priority, in order to signal the seriousness of the issue. They expressed a fear that if diversity wasn’t prioritized in this way, it would eventually be neglected or pushed aside by other priorities. All participants were encouraged to discover what parts of this position rang true for them, even if they initially held another perspective. This is a central tenet of the method: It is often possible to find something that the opposing side can empathize with, and slowly the confrontational stance begins to soften.

The next step was to hear from the other side. These members of the senior team turned the group’s attention to the reasons that DEI should be embedded into everything the organization did, so that it became every person’s responsibility. This group shared stories of other companies in which diversity became a public relations gimmick that was ignored by staff and rolled out only when expedient. A similar process was followed as the whole group explored that position.

When participating in this method, people begin to experience fluidity in their stance. This fluidity is also the core of Johnson’s polarity management method: By engaging multiple perspectives and asking questions, people start to recognize both the benefits and the risks of their preferred side of either/or and tap into the creativity needed to craft an effective both/and solution.

The company in our example found that using the Deep Democracy approach allowed them to come to an agreement and develop plans that avoided the pitfalls feared by the other side. The solution was elegant. The company embedded DEI into the fabric of the organization, but did so by writing it specifically into the scope of each high-level strategic priority. For example, leaders responsible for financial health, customer experience, technological innovation, and so on were expected to explore the DEI implications of their work. No strategy would be considered successful unless it demonstrated how these issues had been woven into the work.

The leader’s task is to create an environment in which different perspectives can be fully explored consciously and collectively. The conversation should not take the tone of a debate or competition. Instead, people “think together,” exploring best- and worst-case scenarios, grappling with challenges, and imagining how their innovation could ensure success.

Model Vulnerability And Lack Of Omniscience

Initially, people may struggle to open up; after all, most have experienced situations in which they were permitted to ask only a few questions or in which follow-up questions were perceived as disruptive. To overcome the negative effects of people’s past experiences, leaders must model openness, clearly invite people to speak candidly, welcome questions and critiques, and listen with a willingness to be influenced.

One global leader of an agricultural company crossed six continents to visit almost every outpost in her division and to listen to staff express their hesitations about adopting a more interconnected approach among the regional offices. At each location, her message was clear: We need to become more connected and collaborative. But her approach was humble. “Would you tell me,” she asked, “how things work here? What worries you about becoming more interconnected? What do you fear you might have to give up?” Her questions and her clear commitment to listening to her staff instilled trust and confidence.

Her employees shared their concerns. They feared that if the regions were more connected, they would have to comply with what headquarters told them, even when they knew it was wrong for their local market. As things stood at the time, these workers often superficially agreed to headquarters’ mandates and then did as they wished, knowing they could fly under the radar. In theory, the proposed organizational change would free staff from being beholden to a strict hierarchy. In practice, they admitted, becoming more interconnected would limit their autonomy.

It would have been easy for the agricultural leader to present strong, rational arguments to prove to the regional staff that their perspectives were wrong. Instead, she did something radical that increased trust dramatically. She affirmed their concerns. She agreed with their belief that there would be losses. She asked the group to delve into their worries, explore them, question what responsibilities and freedoms they hoped to maintain, and then strategize how to protect those boundaries. The method was successful: After a year, a network map revealed a greater level of communication and coordination among regions, and a retrospective showed the organization had responded more quickly and with more coherence to several important global challenges.

When leaders take actions like these, they create change by inviting people to think for themselves and to find their own answers to tough questions. These leaders are willing to be influenced and acknowledge that there are elements of the change that still need to be figured out. This strategy, rather than requiring the leader to balance and address everyone’s concerns, allows people to share the responsibility for change by publicly wrestling with the trade-offs, collectively coming to a resolution, and then committing to the plan’s execution.

Engage Both Peers And Top Leaders

In our experience in working with organizational change leaders, it is often executives at the next level up or peers in other functions who undo promising new initiatives. The idea may sound good at first, and, amid the flurry of competing priorities, these people may not examine the new idea too closely. Then, as the organization begins to experience the costs and hard work of change, support wanes.

Peers in other functions may be most concerned about trade-offs that affect them. Will marketing bear the cost of new purchasing guidelines? Will customer service suffer from reduced product functionality? Eventually, these other functional leaders may decide that the costs outweigh the benefits and will roll back the work that has been done. Or they may unwittingly dismantle a larger effort by overriding key components of it — sometimes because they lack a shared understanding of the context.

For example, amid rising demand, one factory was tasked with drastically improving output and reducing defects. The team of frontline employees and supervisors assigned to develop a solution found that performing more frequent machine maintenance and building new jigs to speed up changeovers between production runs were the keys to achieving higher productivity and quality while lowering overall costs.

Unfortunately, shortly after the new system was up and running, the team’s peers in accounting approached the division leader with concerns that maintenance costs were above historical levels. Those added costs were more than covered by the benefits to output and quality, but because the factory team had not engaged the senior executive to explain their plan and prepare him for the increased cost, the leader responded to it as an isolated issue and ordered the team to bring their maintenance costs back in line. They complied, but forfeited the gains they had made.

To prevent a positive change from being overridden in this way, it is wise to connect with a wide range of people when discussing the potential costs and trade-offs in a project. Change almost always occurs in a complex ecosystem with many cause-and-effect relationships; no one has the full picture, and investments made in one area may pay off in another. Senior leaders generally have a more global view of the situation and the factors driving change. Frontline folks tend to have a richer sense of the particulars. When leaders engage with hard questions and listen to different perspectives, they enable everyone to see more of the ecosystem they are trying to influence.

To help with this approach, leaders can run scenarios: What if X happens? How will we handle Y? Is it worth giving up A to get B? Through those conversations, executives and peers have space to express their concerns and hesitations, assess whether the effort is truly worth its costs, and prepare for strategic investments that might otherwise have raised red flags. This shared understanding helps them avoid unintended consequences, generates greater alignment and commitment, and provides the context needed for individuals to make effective judgment calls as conditions evolve.

The Trade-Offs Of Engaging Trade-Offs

Even as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, it is clear that other critical issues — climate change, racial injustice, political instability, income inequality — will challenge organizations in the future, forcing them to continuously adapt. In this context, the change management tools designed for more stable, predictable environments will not work. When it’s unclear what will happen next month, leaders cannot “manage by objectives” or create three-year plans.

Despite this fast pace of change, leaders should not default to an aggressive timeline and succumb to short-term pressure to roll out change initiatives and push them through to the finish. Instead, the approach we propose will force people to go slower than they are accustomed to at the start. It requires the involvement of people who have been labeled as troublemakers, resisters, or annoyances. It challenges leaders’ ideas about the need for change being self-evident and indisputable. And it invites leaders to be vulnerable — something many executives shy away from in favor of being perceived as powerful.

When they take this approach, leaders are able to identify and invest in the highest-value areas that are ripe for reinvention, then invite others to participate in the design. Employees in this scenario are not just implementers but rather innovators, figuring out ways to break through historical limits and difficult realities. This all may seem daunting, but it’s well worth the effort. The work of engaging trade-offs and hard questions creates a stronger, longer-lasting change.

About The Authors :-

Maya Townsend is founder of Partnering Resources, a consulting firm that specializes in strategy within complex ecosystems and collaboration in human networks. She is coeditor of the Handbook for Strategic HR and author of numerous articles.

Elizabeth Doty is a former lab fellow of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and founder of Leadership Momentum, a consultancy that helps leaders develop cultures of collaboration, commitment, and action. She is a contributing editor of strategy+business.

Thanks to Maya Townsend & Elizabeth Doty / Strategy+Business / Strategy-Business
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-road-to-successful-change-is-lined-with-trade-offs?gko=99979&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=itw20201103&utm_campaign=res

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7 Books In One!

Find Success In The Workplace

You need to know a lot to succeed in business these days, and this book helps you get a handle on seven fundamental business skills, regardless of industry. Discover how to read a financial statement, manage projects, products, and supply chains, and utilize your network to grow your business. Gain valuable digital marketing and business writing skills to improve your emails and copywriting. Put yourself in control of your future at work with the help of this book!

7 Books Inside…

• Accounting
• Operations Management
• Decision-Making
• Project Management
• LinkedIn
• Business Writing
• Digital Marketing

Reviews :-

An excellent compendium of 7 business topics that provide a sound basis for any beginner…

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2018…

When I obtained this book, I was very much a novice when it came to understanding business, both in the fundamentals of how to set-up and structure a company (for me this was a limited liability company) as well as the day to day operational management. This book has been exceptional in terms of taking me from a complete novice to someone with a good overview of the different types of companies, marketing and operational processes such as decision making, project management and accounting to name but a few. I would highly recommend this to individuals who are in a similar circumstance.

This book boasts to be a compendium of 7 other previously written dummies books in the Wiley series and this has certainly been my experience having read through the book. These amalgamations include Accounting, Operations Management, Decision–Making, Project Management, LinkedIn, Business Writing and Digital Marketing. As you might expect from a compendium, each is a standalone section in its own right which provides a solid basis upon which to learn from. From a reader perspective, it takes you through the very basics, with no prior knowledge assumed and builds upon this understanding page by page. Like all the dummies series, there are periodically “tips”, “warnings” and “remember” points that help to articulate to the reader the key messages to take away from the chapter. Despite being a compendium, the book flows well in terms of content and structure.

There were several sections within the book, such as LinkedIn that were not really applicable to me and the company I was establishing, and although I skim read these for interest and reference, I could have quite happily skipped these without having an impact upon understanding future chapter content. I particularly found that both the blogging for business and following up with email marketing were particularly helpful chapters and gave me lots of ideas for how I could implement these for my own business.

Overall, I found this book to be a really helpful overview for all the business related information that I needed to understand from the beginning. It has also provided me with many external links to further my knowledge in particular areas for my own business needs and for this reason, I think this is a 5 star book.

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Publication Date : March 16, 2018

Language: : English

Publisher : For Dummies; 1st Edition (March 16, 2018)

Print Length : 720 pages

 

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Science Reveals The Perfect Time To Drink Coffee For A Healthy Metabolism

It's a vicious cycle: Stay up late into the night and revive yourself upon waking with a cup of strong coffee. While the caffeine may perk you up, it could also have a negative effect on your metabolism, new research suggests.

According to the new study, published in the journal British Journal of Nutrition, a single bad night's sleep isn't likely to acutely impair metabolism. Having coffee before breakfast the next day can.

In the experiment, participants who drank strong, black coffee after a disrupted night's sleep, and followed that up with a sugary drink had impaired blood sugar control — a marker for metabolic dysfunction.‌‌

"It may be better to wait until after breakfast to have coffee following a bad night of sleep — rather than before breakfast in order to balance the stimulating effects of the coffee with their potential to disrupt glucose metabolism," study co-author Harry Smith, a researcher at the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise & Metabolism at the University of Bath, tells Inverse.

Moderate coffee drinking is linked to health benefits like lower risk of heart disease, certain cancers, and neurological conditions, so the findings "don't mean that coffee can't be part of a healthy balanced lifestyle," Smith adds.

What the research does say is that it may be worth considering when to down your java.

Coffee experiment — To determine how broken sleep and morning coffee influence metabolic function, researchers recruited 29 healthy men and women. The group participated in three overnight experiments in random order:

• Participants had a normal night's sleep (approximately eight hours) and consumed a sugary drink upon waking in the morning.
• Participants experienced a disrupted night's sleep (where the researchers woke them every hour for five minutes using specially designed texting prompts) and then upon waking were given the same sugary drink.
• Participants experienced the same sleep disruption but were first given a strong black coffee (including approximately 300 milligrams of caffeine) 30 minutes before consuming the sugary drink.

At the start of the study, researchers measured participants' height, weight, and waist circumference along with health metrics like sleep quality, mood, and appetite. After completing each condition, researchers took samples of the participants' blood after drinking the sugary drink. The drink was designed to mirror the calories of a typical breakfast.

The health impacts of a cup of joe — The scientists found that one night of broken sleep did not affect people's insulin sensitivity or glucose tolerance —two markers of metabolic health — the next day, compared to a full night of sleep.

The study may be reassuring for those who occasionally miss out on their full eight hours of rest. But those who regularly lose out on snoozing time aren't out of the woods, metabolically speaking.

"More severe acute sleep disruption and/or chronic sleep disruption have been associated with impaired glucose metabolism and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease," Smith notes.

The results may throw a wrench in the morning routines of avid coffee drinkers.

In the study, consuming strong, black coffee after broken sleep substantially increased the blood glucose response to breakfast by around 50 percent. This shift doesn't necessarily put someone at risk for diabetes or other metabolic disorders, but the scientists say it could influence health if the spike occurs habitually.

"Single occasions of elevated blood glucose responses such as in the study can be predictive of cardiometabolic events in the future, and this response repeated over a long period of time certainly could have an impact on health such as reduced insulin sensitivity," Smith explains. Still, other factors such as physical activity need to be considered when predicting long-term outcomes.

Shifting coffee routines — Taken together, these findings suggest drinking coffee after a bad night's sleep can make you feel alert, but may limit your body's ability to tolerate the sugar in your breakfast.

That's because the caffeine contained in coffee beans has a negative effect on sensors in the muscle that help take glucose out of the blood, therefore resulting in this higher blood glucose response, Smith explains. Caffeine also stimulates a greater release of lipids into the blood which also negatively impacts our muscles' ability to take glucose out of the blood.

"If this scenario of caffeinated coffee before breakfast is continued over a prolonged period it is possible that this may have longer-term health implications, however, it is also likely that our body clock may adjust to the morning spike in blood glucose," Smith says.

More, larger randomized clinical trials are needed to hammer out exactly how coffee routines impact daily metabolic function. But for now, these findings suggest people should consume their bean juice after breakfast, not before, to support a healthy metabolism.

"We know that nearly half of us will wake in the morning and, before doing anything else, drink coffee - intuitively the more tired we feel, the stronger the coffee," study co-author James Betts, co-director of the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism at the University of Bath, said in a related statement. "This study is important and has far-reaching health implications as up until now we have had limited knowledge about what this is doing to our bodies, in particular for our metabolic and blood sugar control."

Coffee is the world's most popular beverage, so drinking morning coffee at the perfect time is useful information for billions of individuals.

"Put simply, our blood sugar control is impaired when the first thing our bodies come into contact with is coffee especially after a night of disrupted sleep. We might improve this by eating first and then drinking coffee later if we feel we still feel we need it. Knowing this can have important health benefits for us all."

LONGEVITY HACKS is a series on the science-backed strategies to live better, healthier, and longer.

HOW THIS AFFECTS LONGEVITY — People who drank strong black coffee before breakfast after a bad night's sleep had impaired metabolism and blood glucose tolerance. Scientists aren't sure what this coffee drinking habit would lead to over time but say there could be negative long term effects.

WHY IT'S A HACK — Other studies show coffee can help protect the heart and promote longevity. But this study suggests when you have it can be a crucial factor to avoid unintended effects on metabolism.

SCIENCE IN ACTION — Scientists suggest drinking coffee after breakfast, not before, to support a healthy metabolism.

HACK SCORE OUT OF 10 — ☕️☕️☕️☕️- Health experts recommend limiting coffee intake to four cups per day.

Thanks to Inverse
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/the-abstract-breaking-bad-how-to-create-positive-changes-that-stick/amp

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4 Ways To Build Organizational Resilience

This pandemic has demonstrated just how brittle our society is. A tiny virus has drastically upset our lives, our economies and our societies. In a time like this, resilience—the ability to adapt and bounce back—will be one of the most important characteristics that will help us recover.

But how do we design our organizations for resilience? Here are four things to consider: 

1. Resilience Demands Distributed Control With Centralized Coordination, Not Centralized Control With Distributed Execution. In order to prepare for the unforeseen, the military branches have developed highly trained, distributed teams that are enabled and empowered by coordination and data. We need to consider such a model in HR.

Traditional HR was seen as a low-cost, high-value service function—one that responded to employee needs and delivered services at scale. This is not the optimum model in a crisis. We need to distribute authority fast, make sure teams have the capabilities needed and coordinate the response.

Early this year, the senior executives of a global retailer heard from HR leaders in Italy and China that they were letting employees go because customers were not patronizing the stores. The company empowered local teams to shut down operations and quickly shared this firsthand information so others could act.

As the military has learned, we only win wars when the people on the frontline are well-trained, experienced, coordinated and supported with ammunition, backup and data. Think about this in the context of your HR transformation.

2. Resilience Demands High Quality, Real-Time Data. Facts, detail and real-time data matter. We can’t respond to a crisis if we don’t know where it is, how fast it’s spreading and can’t separate truth from speculation.

In recent months, we’ve seen what happens when facts are not forthcoming or are obfuscated. In a company, you can’t afford to operate without complete transparency. In order for a “coordinated attack and response” to take place, accurate, real-time data is critical.

I recently talked with people analytics experts who had created real-time dashboards to inform managers where employees are located, where the virus is spreading and where travel is prohibited. On an employee level, managers knew who was working from home, living alone and might be at risk so programs and decisions could be appropriately tailored.

Such analytics are critical to resilience. If you haven’t invested in this infrastructure yet, please do it now.

3. Resilience Requires Leaders Who Care. Resilient organizations have leaders whom people want to follow.

Our COVID-19 Pulse of HR found that financial security, health and family welfare are issues on top of people’s minds. If senior leaders don’t empathize and relate to this, your company won’t recover well.

If you want to build resilience, you have to build on a basis of trust. And this means leaders who listen, care and respond. Companies such as Unilever, Salesforce, Wegman’s, Novartis, Nextdoor and IBM understand this and created business models around empathy and transparency. Their CEOs “walk the talk.”

Empathy for your customers, communities, employees and their families goes a long way. Certainly, it’s a more emotional way of thinking about business leadership, but in a crisis, empathy must be a top priority.

One more thought: You can’t fake empathy in times like this. Companies that sincerely care will respond faster than those who don’t.

4. Resilience Thrives In A Community, Not Just An Organization. The most resilient, adaptive and high-performing companies are made up of people who know each other, like each other and support each other.

In the military, soldiers are trained to look out for fellow soldiers (“Nobody will be left behind.”).  How many of us have a battle buddy at work?

Decades of management philosophy have ignored this need. Remember the forced rankings and the Peter Principle models? These approaches pitted people against each other and created internal competition.

Now we need a sense of oneness. We need to know each other, speak up and discuss problems, and have a family-like sense of belonging. Certainly, companies aren’t families (we do lay people off), but when there is a sense of collective culture, a company can adapt quickly.

When I visit companies, I always observe how people behave. Are people nice to each other? Friendly? Respectful? Do they talk or wait for the boss to talk first?

Sure enough, in the highest-performing companies, I always sense a feeling of “we know each other” and “we know how to work together.” Such social bonds are vital.

Ultimately, building resilience in our companies is coupled with liberating the innate resilience in each of us. When we give people adequate pay, healthcare, safety and security, they can adapt and grow.

About The Author :- Josh Bersin writes HRE’s HR in the Flow of Work column. Bersin is an analyst, author, educator and thought leader focusing on the global talent market and the challenges and trends impacting business workforces around the world.

Thanks to Josh Bersin / Human Resource Executive / HRExecutive
https://hrexecutive.com/josh-bersin-4-ways-to-build-organizational-resilience/?eml=20200421&oly_enc_id=2915H9573389A9W

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Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling & Help Your Customers Make Progress By Bob Moesta

About the Authors :- Bob Moesta is a co-founder of The Re-Wired Group, and one of the architects of the Jobs to be Done theory in conjunction with the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen (1952 - 2020). He has launched more than 3,500 new products and services, and founded seven start-ups throughout his career. Bob Moesta trained as an engineer and worked as an intern for Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality revolution. He is a graduate of Michigan State University, Harvard Business School, and Stanford University.

Greg Engle is also a co-founder of The Re-Wired Group, and currently serves as a partner in the firm. He is a skilled teacher, consultant, and coach, and has been a sales manager for several companies as well as director of sales for a senior living community. Greg Engle is a graduate of Macomb Community College.

The Main Idea :- Most companies approach sales solely from the supply side of the equation — "We've made a great product, now let's go find some customers". A different and potentially better way to sell is to cater to the demand side of the equation instead — "What problem is my customer trying to solve right now, and how can I get them to pull my product or service into their life and/or career?"

Demand-side selling is where you sell by helping people make progress in the journey they are on. You reframe the sales process to be more like coaching, mentoring, and helping rather than pushing what you have. Help customers hire your product to enable them to get a job done they care about.

Don't push products. Create pull by focusing on what customers are struggling with, and what they are trying to achieve. That's a better and smarter way to sell.

Great salespeople don't sell; they help. They listen, understand what you want to achieve, and help you achieve it. A better title would be "concierge." Great salespeople help customers make progress in their lives, on their terms. They are helpful, empowering, curious, and creative. They create win-win situations! Salespeople are the lifeblood of any organization. Let us teach you how to stop selling and start helping people make progress in their lives. --- Bob Moesta and Greg Engle

How to Help Your Customers Make Progress

1. Selling vs. Buying. Traditional sales is supply-side thinking — you talk extensively about features, benefits, and use persuasion. Demand-side selling is where you get to understand what buyers and users are trying to achieve first. You identify when they have a struggling moment and think, "Maybe I can do better." You align your product with the job to be done (JTBD).

2. The three key frameworks for how people buy. To excel at demand-side selling, you need to understand three frameworks:

1. The three sources of buyer energy and motivation
2. The four forces of progress
3. The JTBD timeline

3. Applying the demand-side frameworks. To figure out how to move from pushing products and services to creating consistent demand-side pull, you need to start interviewing your existing customers, and see the world through their eyes. Identify the JTBD when people consider, and ultimately buy your product or service. Fill in details for the three key frameworks, and find the set of causes which will generate a domino effect. Connect the dots and then reframe your selling process as serving and helping the customer get jobs done. It's a better way to sell.

Key Takeaways :- Don't push products. Create pull by focusing on what customers are trying to do, and helping them.

Everyone’s struggling with something, and that’s where the opportunity lies to help people make progress. Selling isn’t about you. Great sales requires a complete devotion to being curious about other people. Their reasons, not your reasons.

Jason Fried, founder, 37signals

Demand-side sales is about pulling people toward progress. Flipping this lens flips the role of salesperson from icky used car salesperson to a helper. When you get away from pushing your product, you start to make people feel like you’re helping them; you’re their concierge. You’re no longer the used car salesperson. A great salesperson listens first and then helps. --- Bob Moesta

Summaries.Com Editor's Comments :- Now this is a very smart book. Bob Moesta and Greg Engle make the point that most companies approach sales from the Supply side: "We've made a great product. Let's go find someone to sell it to". They point out a much better way to sell is to use a Demand side perspective: " Here's a group of customers who are trying to solve this problem. How can we help them, and get them to pull our product or service into their life and/or career?"

Demand-side selling is all about understanding the job customers want done, and then helping them make progress on their journey. It's the opposite of being pushy. You create pull instead. Or, in their words: "Great salespeople don't sell; they help. Great salespeople help customers make progress in their lives. They create win-win situations."

Very smart, and very much aligned with the digital world in which we now operate. Stop selling, and start helping people make progress. It works.

Thanks to Summaries.com
https://summaries.com/blog/demand-side-sales-101

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