I wish I had an original blog post in me today, but unfortunately, I don’t. So instead, some links to other things I’ve written:
At Fast Company, I’m writing about “How your someday list reveals who you really are and what you really want to do.” Productivity app Any.do allows users to sort tasks into Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming, and Someday buckets. According to their analysis of their most productive users, if you don’t move a Someday task up to a more immediate list within 6 weeks, chances are you’ll never do it. This piece looks at what you can learn from that.
Also at Fast Company, I’m writing about “How to manage a flexible workforce, and make sure work-at-home employees keep innovating.” I interview Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother magazine, about how she manages teams that have a fair amount of control over their own schedules. As she puts it, she never wants for new ideas. It’s possible to be innovative even if you’re not at the office.
At Fortune, I’m writing about “What’s an MBA for, anyway?” In 1950, management guru Peter Drucker wrote a feature for Fortune about the rise of the MBA, and what it meant for business. I look back on this piece 63 years later and talk about what has changed, and what has not.
A friend is a VP at a startup and her team includes folks all over the country. One of her requirements of her remote workers is that they detail what their child care arrangements are, because sales folks are on the phone or meeting clients so much of the time,and she wants to make sure they are not trying to do those things while also taking care of their kids. I thought that was pretty smart to be up-front about asking for this before there was a problem.
I like some travel and some social time meetings, interactions with others in my industry ..then some quiet time to look at a salesperson’s orders etc. and to more ‘quietly’ follow up etc. I’m not described usually as quiet.. as an extrovert I enjoy having an office with a door and for any employee I think work is done better without too many weird or constant interruptions to socially perform inside the office (big company people call that like internal PR) it has a place … but it often is too much part of the workday.. and one of the things I like about entrepreneurship is you don’t have to worry as much about keeping the person next to you in t he cubicle like next to you happy etc. partying or building the trust the editor of working mother talks about that ‘have your back’ within a team is huge though …