Librarian by Day » employees

Top Ten Links Week 21

Bobbi Newman — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:01:44 +0000

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 5/21/2010 thru 5/27/2010. Ok I’ll confess right off the bat, I cheated, there are 12 links this week. I just couldn’t cut them down. A couple of these deserve their own blog post so shame on me for not giving them the attention they deserve.

1. How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking - great article from Peter Bregman with some clear reasons why you should stop multi-tasking

A study showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs.

What’s the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than twice the effect of smoking marijuana.

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

Even better are the six things he learned the week he stopped trying to multi-task. I really need to do this

First, it was delightful.
Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects
Third, my stress dropped dramatically.
Fourth, I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time.
Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable.
Sixth, there was no downside.

2. RT @dmlcentral The Dalai Lama taps Internet and social media to engage in rare direct conversation w/ Chinese citizens – yep the Dalai Lama used Twitter.

3. Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media – a brief article from the Pew Internet & American Life Project looking at racial differences in the use of social media.

4. 7 of My Favorite Timeless Tips from the Last 2500 Years

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” – Andrew Carnegie
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” – Wayne Dyer
“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.” “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.” – Gandhi
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

5. RT @kongtemplation: great interview tips for librarians from @lynnemthomas – Tips for Librarian on the job market: 4 tips from the interview stage – a must read for anyone looking for a job

Secret #1: If you have landed an interview, the search committee already believes that you are capable of doing the job as they have described it and as you have indicated on your CV and Cover letter.
Secret #2: Interviews really answer the question “am I willing to work with this particular person every day for the next 10 years?” for good and for ill, on both sides.
Secret #3: The search committee is terrified that you won’t like them, either.
Secret #4: We’re all hoping for The One. The Perfect Gig. The You-Can-Pry-My-Awesome-Job-Out-of-My-Cold-Dead-Hands connection. But mostly? Especially early in our careers, we’re looking for a job that will work pretty well for us, and the search committee is looking for someone to fill their job without making them regret their decision a year or two down the line.

6. “Quitting Facebook is pointless; challenging them to do better is not“ (Another blog post on the topic by moi) via @zephoria

People will not leave Facebook en masse, even if a new site were to emerge. Realistically, if that were enough, they could go to MySpace or Orkut or Friendster or Tribe. But they won’t. And not just because those sites are no longer “cool.” They won’t because they’ve invested in Facebook and they’re still hoping that Facebook will get its act together. Changing services is costly, just like moving apartments or changing jobs or breaking up in general. The deeper the relationship, the harder it is to simply walk away. And the relationship that Facebook has built with many of its users is very very very deep. When transition costs are high, people work hard to change the situation so that they don’t have to transition. This is why people are complaining, this is why they are speaking up. And it’s really important that those in power listen to what it is that people are upset about. The worst thing that those in power can do is ignore what’s going on, waiting for it to go away.

7. RT @VenessaMiemis: smart piece on the meaning of privacy in an information age by @doriantaylor – a must read!

8. good convo about tweeting during presentations Twitter, tweeting and ethics via @woodsiegirl – a great discussion about using Twitter during presentations and meeting on the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CLIP) a UK-based professional organization for librarians.

9. 6 Reasons Why People Don’t Change, and What to Do About That – another great post from one of my favorite blogs. Here are the six reasons for how to overcome them read the full post

You don’t want to change.
You don’t feel courageous enough.
Your environment is holding you back.
You feel like giving up after one or three failures.
You don’t feel enough pain yet.
You don’t know how to practically make the change.

10 Why Controlling Bosses Have Unproductive Employees

…if your employees consider you a controlling person, even an unconscious thought of you can have a negative effect on their performance. If, for example, they were to happen to subliminally see, out of the corner of their eyes, your name flash for 60 milliseconds, you could expect them to start working less hard. Even if they didn’t intend to slack off.

11. yes! RT @uMCLE: Clay Shirky & Daniel Pink – a terrific conversation about TV, social networking & motivation – I’m a big fan of both of these gentleman and this is a great conversation

12. RT @zephoria: Pew Research confirms that youth care about their reputation. Report: Reputation Management and Social Media My comments:Pew Research confirms that youth care about their reputationSimilar Posts:

Employers You Don’t Have a Facebook Problem You Have an Employee Problem

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:21:55 +0000

I hear questions like these a lot at conferences – How do I stop my employees from wasting time on Facebook? or What do I do with an employee who is spending too much time on Facebook?

My responds is always the same – You don’t have a Facebook problem you have an employee problem. What would you do if that employee were spending too much time at the water cooler? Or on the phone with his girlfriend? Or playing solitaire all day? For some reason when people are presented with an old problem in a digital format they focus on the format and not the problem.

Ask some important questions – is this employee getting their work done? If the answer is yes, well then you need to decide if you really have a problem or if you just a problem with Facebook. If they were spending time doing something else like chatting at the water cooler how would you feel? What if they were doing something less visible? Like emailing friends or playing solitaire or watching last nights episode of Lost or reading the news online?

If the answer is no he is not getting his work done, then blocking Facebook won’t solve your problem. This person will find another way to spend their time, walking around, playing solitaire, watching last night’s episode of Lost, reading the news. You need to address the problem not the symptom. Blacklisting Facebook will only cause more problems.

“Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships.” – Peter Bradwell

Measuring productivity in time is an assembly line mentality, working 8 hours produces 200 widgets, lose time and you lose widgets. In today’s knowledge workplace that doesn’t translate, taking breaks make workers more productive.

“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a day’s work, and as a result, increased productivity.” - Dr. Brent Coker

It is important for employees to socialize with coworkers to brainstorm and share ideas which leads to improved productivity and performance. In a knowledge worker environment an employees peers, his knowledge network, are more likely to be across the country than in the office next door.

Studies that accuse social networks of reducing productivity assume that time spent microblogging is time strictly wasted. But that betrays an ignorance of the creative process. Humans weren’t designed to maintain a constant focus on assigned tasks. We need periodic breaks to relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking. - Brendan I. Koerner

Treating employees like the competent, intelligent adults that you hired (and if you’re not hiring competent intelligent adults you have a much larger problem) goes a long way to improving moral which improves productivity.

During the same time that Facebook grew from 100 million users to 200 million and Twitter went Oprah (March ’08 to March ’09) U.S business sector productivity has increased 2.0 percent. This is a bit off the recent historic rate 2.5% – but I don’t think anyone during this recession is blaming that on Twitter.

Companies that think they may have a productivity problem because of social networks and the like actually have a measurement problem – that is – they don’t know how to objectively measure whether an employee is meeting standards of productivity. In the absence of clear measurement – they resort to punitive actions (blocking these sites, monitoring employee behavior) that can damage morale and trust.

Lastly, most companies don’t recognize that they often expect employees to check email after hours and bring work home when needed. If this is the expectation then blocking employees from accessing these social sites during “work hours” is not a fair bargain - Joshua-Michéle Ross

Let me be perfectly clear I am not advocating that you ignore a productivity problem or a problem employee, but address the problem not the symptom.

Resources:

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Want Innovation? Get Out of the Way

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:40:35 +0000

cc image used courtesy of Vermin Inc on flickr

We hear a lot about innovation and change these days. Everyone is talking about it, every is doing it, or at least trying to. There’s a problem though, change and innovation require more than lip service. Declaring that you are innovative does not make it so.

You know what I’m talking about, someone reads an article, attends a presentation, has a conversation over coffee and comes back to work and says – we’re going to be innovative! Maybe there are even a few committees put together. But then what? Nothing. The committees quit meeting and things go back to the way they were. Maybe one or two people are still trying, but no one is listening.

You know why? Because innovation doesn’t happen by committee or decree.

Organizations do not innovate. People innovate. Inspired people. Fascinated people. Creative people. Committed people. That’s where innovation begins. On the inside.

The organization’s role — just like the individual manager’s role — is to get out of the way. And while this “getting out of the way” will undoubtedly include the effort to formulate supportive systems, processes, and protocols, it is important to remember that systems, processes, and protocols are never the answer. - Mitch Ditkoff

So how do you create a culture of innovation? You start with the people who think differently than you do.

Diversity is one of those sticky terms that people seem to boil down to creating a Benetton ad. Diversity isn’t about some magical collection of five differently colored skin tones. It’s about bringing different perspectives and backgrounds to the table and creating an environment that values what can be gained from different voices who’ve taken different paths. Skin color (or gender performance) is often interpreted as a reasonable substitute for this and, for many reasons, it has been historically. But bringing in a woman whose attitude and approach is just as masculine as the men isn’t going to help your team break outside of its current mindset. They key is to bring people who think differently than you - danah boyd*

Then get out of their way.

Once you’ve hired a good staff, you sit down, you formulate a plan and then you get out of their way. John Limbert

Let them do what you hired them to do.

The really good people want autonomy — you let me do it, and I’ll do it. So I told the people I recruited: “You come in here and you’ve got to keep me informed, but you’re the guy, and you’ll make these decisions. It won’t be me second-guessing you. But everybody’s going to win together. We’re part of a team, but you’re going to run your part.” That’s all they want. They want a chance to do it. - Gordon M. Bethune

You can not force innovation to happen. You can provide the autonomy, the trust to allow people to be innovative.

*danah boyd’s post is about gender issues and being a woman in todays workforce. It’s worth a read (and mostly likely a blog post) in is own right.Similar Posts:

Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:38:41 +0000

CC image courtesy of Bill Gracey - Gone to Mexico on flickr

The issue of control comes up over and over again when we talk about the online world. It recently it came up at Internet Librarian in many different ways, including:

How do I stop a staff member from wasting time on Facebook?
How do we control what staff are saying online?
Management wants everything posted online (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc) to go through PR.
We don’t want employees to be able to access social networking sites?
What about privacy?
We can’t allow just anyone to post a comment without approving it first.
How do we know a student is who they say they are?

I have answers to all of these questions, but these questions aren’t what this is about, what they represent is, control. Or the illusion of control.

The desire for control comes from fear. Fear of change, of the unknown, of doing things differently, of a situation not created by us, of taking risks. It is human nature to fear these things, it’s how we’ve survived. So is adaptation and times are changing, just as they always do, and we need to adapt.

In the internet age your image/brand no longer belongs to you. It belongs to your customers. The things they have always been saying are now online for the whole world to see. The content and commentary they post about you may rank higher in search engines than your site or content. You can’t stop them. Every attempt you make will be like fighting the Hydra, cut off a head, two will grow back. I promise.

Prevent comments on your website? They’ll start their own blog or Twitter account or website. Implement a filter to block social networking sites? They will find a way around it (and you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face).

Stop wasting time trying to get control, you might be fooling your boss or the board or yourself, but you are not fooling your staff or more importantly your customers. Better yet, when you stop spending time trying to get control or pretending that you have it, it frees you and your time to address the real issues.

Still not ready to let go? Think about these questions from Andrew McAfee :

Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time?
If not, why not?
Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers?
Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties?
Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

Still not convinced? Or need to convince someone else? Try reading these:

*Up Next – What you can do after you’ve accepted control is an illusion.Similar Posts:

Managers – The Message You’re Sending About Time is Affecting Customer Service

Bobbi Newman — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:47:07 +0000

CC image courtesy of Robbert van der Steeg on Flickr

The choice you need to make is will it affect it in a good way or a bad way?

We are all busy. My to-do list is so long at this point I keep a master running list and a small list just for today, because looking at the long list inspires panic.

As individuals, managers and organizations it can be easy to keep adding responsibilities, expectations and tasks to our list and to the lists of others. Especially at a time like this, when you may be short staffed, or just busier than normal (library usage goes up during a recession) or both.

Unfortunately this attitude towards time can really hurt you in customer service. How staff feel about their time and the expectation from management affects how they interact with patrons. It’s the difference between handing someone a call number and vaguely gesturing towards the stacks and leaving the desk and walking the patron to the book. It’s the difference between hand the book over and walking away or asking if you can help them find anything else. It shows up in the type of greeting patrons receive in that minutes of extra chit-chat so many love, in determining if the information they are asking for is really the information they are seeking.

Don’t think it’s just front line staff either. It can mean the difference in pulling that raggedy looking book or letting it circulate one more time, in ensuring the door knobs and other areas are properly disinfected, in how fast a phone call is returned. I could go on but I think you get the idea.

Want to get smart about time? Here are some suggestions from How Smart Leaders Talk About Time on Harvard Business.

1) Establish a shared language that distinguishes between the “pressure on time” and “impact on goals” factors.

Team leaders often fail to make this distinction clear. Tasks are transmitted without specifying if the emphasis on such task is due to:

a combination of the above mentioned two factors

the fact the task has a remarkable impact on the individual or group’s goals

the restricted timeframe within which the task must be completed

2) Reduce those activities that, despite being important, must be performed under pressure. (emphasis mine)

A successful leader reduces “urgent and important” activities to a minimum, by monitoring:

How tasks are planned and delegated.

How “urgent and important” activities can be reduced.

How much free-of-distraction time people have for high-impact activities.

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It’s not about the money

Bobbi Newman — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:39:38 +0000

I’ve been reading, watching and listening to a lot about motivation lately. Not intentionally but once you start thinking about what motivates people to create, to participate, to get involved it starts to show up in places you don’t expect it. Sometimes I got looking for it too. Over and over I notice the same theme, it’s not about the money. Sure money is important up to a certain point, but after that you need something else.

In times like these when we are asked to do more with less this is something managers should keep in mind.

One of the videos I watched is this TED talk by Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. He talks about the mismatch of what science knows about motivation and what business does. Essentially as long as you’re paying people adequately and fairly, money is no longer the most powerful motivation. Watch the video and maybe buy the book when it comes out. You can also read the entire transcript on TED.

There are a lot of interesting points, here is one of my favorites:

“Results Only Work Environment. The ROWE. Created by two American consultants, in place in place at about a dozen companies around North America. In a ROWE people don’t have schedules. They show up when they want. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time, or any time. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, where they do it, is totally up to them. Meetings in these kinds of environments are optional.

What happens? Almost across the board, productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up, turnover goes down.”

What do you think? If more money wouldn’t motivate you, what would?

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The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

Bobbi Newman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:28:38 +0000

Photo by David Reece on Flickr

I’m thinking about change and culture and innovation a great deal these days so I’m reading everything I can get my hands on. I came across this paper, or manifesto – The Hazards of Leading Culture Change. Its concise but packed with good stuff!

Some of my favorite points:

When you are up to your backside in alligators, it is hard to remember you were there to drain the swamp.
…the illusion of advancement is far worse than none at all.
Three turtles sat on a log in the edge of the swamp. One decided to jump in. How many are now on the log? Nope, there are still three. Deciding and doing are not the same thing.
Leaders sometime achieve their positions through competencies in other than superior leadership of people.
Without hands-on trial and error and confrontation of outdated behaviors – all done with a helpful but unswerving facilitator – employees will not likely give up obsolete tasks
Old ways can die hard – for employees and for customers. Even if the old way has been a negative to customers, they have learned to deal with it. They also can harbor some of the same cynicism as employees, and may actually work to sabotage new efforts.
When leaders have even the slightest doubt about the worth of the vision or the correctness of the strategies, they can acquiesce and soften their resolve before the culture change effort has had a chance to gain a solid footing
Culture change takes a long time because its complex and disruptive.
What separates the culture change winners from those that drop out of the race? It starts with a clear vision that is clear, compelling and constantly used both as the anchor for judgement and a lens for alignment.

These are just a few nuggets of wisdom, go read the whole paper.Similar Posts:

What Reading (Listening) Do You Recommend for a Leadership Program?

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:51:45 +0000

My library has a leadership program and we were asked to recommend

books,
journals
articles
blogs
blogposts
podcasts
whatever

with an annotation preferably, on any topic relevant to leadership, management, customers service or other topic we think would be helpful to participants. I went through my favorites of the last couple of years and came up with these:

What do you recommend?Similar Posts:

Librarian by Day » employees

Top Ten Links Week 21

Top Ten Links Week 20 – Job Search Tips, The Future, The iPad, Speaking Tips and More

Employers You Don’t Have a Facebook Problem You Have an Employee Problem

Want Innovation? Get Out of the Way

Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go

Managers – The Message You’re Sending About Time is Affecting Customer Service

It’s not about the money

The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

What Reading (Listening) Do You Recommend for a Leadership Program?