This post is part of our Learning Round-up series, designed to showcase informative and trending content from the last month or so, mainly revolving around HR, learning & development, productivity, psychology, and decision making.
Why Data Culture Matters
By Alejandro Díaz, Kayvaun Rowshankish, and Tamim Saleh | McKinsey | 9 Sept 2018
- "... companies’ data-analytics efforts are all over the map. McKinsey research suggests that the gap between leaders and laggards in adopting analytics, within and among industry sectors, is growing. We’re seeing the same thing on the ground. Some companies are doing amazing things; some are still struggling with the basics; and some are feeling downright overwhelmed, with executives and members of the rank and file questioning the return on data initiatives."
- "In this article, we present seven of the most prominent takeaways from conversations we’ve had with these and other executives who are at the data-culture fore.”
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Give Your Team the Freedom to Do the Work They Think Matters Most
By Brian Carney & Isaac Getz | HBR | 10 Sept 2018
- “… top-down control carries serious costs, many of which have been hiding in plain sight. What is more, there is an alternative. And not a pie-in-the-sky fantasy conjured up on a whiteboard, but a real, working alternative. It has been practiced to varying degrees in companies around the world for decades… This alternative has never had a name because—fittingly, as you’ll see—it hasn’t really had a guru... We call it corporate liberation. The idea can be stated simply enough: A liberated company allows employees complete freedom and responsibility to take actions that they—not their managers—decide are best for their company’s vision.”
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Why The Chief Human Resources Officer Is The True Hand To The CEO
By Krisy McCann | Forbes | 5 Sept 2018
- "I recently spoke at a conference where more than half of the 200 HR professional attendees did not report to the CEO and had little to no budget. Seems crazy, right? According to Harvard Business Review, 'Research by McKinsey and the Conference Board consistently finds that CEOs worldwide see human capital as a top challenge, and they rank HR as only the eighth or ninth most important function in a company.’ ”
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The Ultimate Model for Successful and Long-Lasting Behaviour Change
By Melody Wilding | Medium | 18 August 2018
- "In the early 1980s, health psychologists James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente developed a model to explain how to make long-lasting behaviour changes. Their Transtheoretical Model (TTM) recognises that people are in different stages of readiness for change. It’s easiest to think of the model as an upward spiral or curve, progressing through the five stages of change: [Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance]."
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The 31-Year-Old Teacher Who Beat 30,000 People To Become The World Champion Of Public Speaking Explains Exactly How She Did It
By Mark Abadi | Business Insider | 28 August 2018
- "Ramona Smith, a 31-year-old teacher from Houston, won the ToastmastersWorld Championship of Public Speaking competition on Saturday. Smith broke down the techniques she used in her winning speech in an interview with Business Insider. Watch her six-minute speech below, and use her insight for your own presentations and interviews.”
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The Most Persuasive Word in the Dictionary
By Bignoggins | Medium | 26 August 2018
- "The power of the word ‘because' was discovered in 1978 by Harvard professor Ellen Langer. If you read the entire paper, she essentially obliterates the notion that humans behave rationally. Through a series of experiments, she proves that whenever a “because” is appended to a request, compliance increases by over 50 percent, regardless of whether the reason is sound.”
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Four-Day Work Week is Good for Businesses and Workers
By Jarrod Haar | ABC News | 25 July 2018
- "Employees at a New Zealand company behind an innovative trial of a four-day working week have declared it a resounding success, with 78% saying they were better able to manage their work-life balance."
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Why Self-Help Might Actually Be Making You Less Happy
By Clay Skipper | GQ | 6 Sept 2018
- "The main thought of a depressed person is, 'I'm not good enough, I can never be good enough, it's my own fault why I'm not good enough.' The frightening fact is [that] the depressed person is actually right. He or she is actually interpreting society's message to the individual correctly. We're never allowed to be happy and satisfied, both what we are and what we do."
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I Studied Mentally Strong People for 15 Years and Discovered They All Had This One Thing in Common
By Amy Morin | Inc. | 10 Sept 2018
- "In all, I identified 13 things mentally strong people don't do. These were common habits that seemed minor on the surface, but clearly they made a big difference in their lives.”
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How to Use Parkinson’s Law to Increase Your Productivity by 50%
By Matt Valentine | Goal Cast | 31 Aug 2018
- "I’ve seen consistent productivity increases of at least 50% when consciously utilising Parkinson’s Law to its fullest.”
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Why Time Management So Often Fails
By José Luis Peñarredonda | BBC | 5 Sept 2018
- "... searching for a technique that works leaves many people frustrated, anxious and guilty – the opposite of the ‘stress-free productivity’ that time management is supposed to achieve.”
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The Myths of Mindfulness
By Jill Suttie | Greater Good | 5 Sept 2018
- "Perhaps we fear that meditation is too new agey, or it might slow us down or lead to complacency... But new research studies bust some of the common myths around mindfulness meditation."
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Today is the 20th Anniversary of ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ Why Does It Still Move Us?
By Ron Charles | Washington Post | 6 Sept 2018
- "Praised, imitated and satirised, 'Who Moved My Cheese?' became a fixture on the bestseller list. Snobs claimed to be lactose intolerant to Johnson’s wisdom, but millions of fans kept recommending the book to others. Why?"
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