Random Articles

• How to Stifle Teamwork - Part 2 “Rating and ranking engender competition, not collaboration” - Esther Derby, An Alternative to the Yearly Performance Review I always felt annual performance reviews existed for disconnected management to reinforce hierarchy. To know that their prime purpose (in employees’ minds) of securing an individual salary increase actually incents people to not collaborate is doubly disheartening. Compare this
• Unsocial Networks The Head Lemur digs into Ning’s terms of service (similar to Flickr’s and YouTube’s, et. al) highlighting the problem: in exchange for free services “members” grant rights to their stuff to promote the “network”. “None of these sites are created for the people. These are, to the last picture, file, and pixel solely created as
• Retention is a Measure of Motivation Ron Baker’s ‘Your Employees are Volunteers’ is a much needed post. It includes gems like: “Today, knowledge workers themselves own the firm’s means of production in their heads.” “In fact, your people are actually volunteers, since whether or not they return to work on any given day is completely based on their own volition.” Thanks Ron. The attitude
• The Second Lesson From Las Vegas  Sam and I checked out the grand opening of the Shoppes at Woodbury Lakes last week. Yes, it is a Shoppes at Arbor Lakes for the east Metro. Same developer. A couple years back, I did a deep dive into urban planning books and one of the texts Lewis Dijkstra recommended was Robert Venturi’s Learning
• ‘EOM’ for ‘End of Message’ another Email Subject Line Tag I’m starting to see more tags (see Better Email Tips) in my email subject lines. Today, I received an email canceling a meeting, with all the information contained in the subject line with “(eom)” at the end. eom: end of message I’d recommend using it when your entire message can be included in the subject line and