"The Urban Doom Loop"

"The Urban Doom Loop"

The Urban Doom Loop is a cousin of the WFH discussions. Basically, it says: "If more people WFH, downtown urban cores will be destroyed." There are points to be made in this discussion about the sales tax that cities can collect, and if that sales tax declines, cities may cut corners on necessary infrastructure and services. That's true. But "The Urban Doom Loop" concept is not a strong enough argument for ending WFH. You'll sometimes hear, "Oh, without strong downtown areas, we'll be less innovative." I'd argue that more people working flexibly and not beholden to a myriad of in-office distractions will also increase innovation in other ways. Cities do need a dynamic future, but the "Urban Doom Loop" argument isn't the way to justify return-to-office.

Financial Literacy

Good read from NPR here:

They frame that article around financial literacy in high school and even elementary school, which I agree we need. But I also do think the organizational culture needs an element of financial literacy. A lot of people don't know how to balance a simple checkbook, let alone business financials. We can blame that on society or parenting or "the system," but companies typically have several people internally who are great with money and understand how to move money around successfully. Your culture should be set up to pay that forward to your people. For that reason, Culture Partners acquired Paradigm last year and has an offering all-around developing financial acumen.

"Work" vs. "Woke"

I got to be on CNN last Friday morning discussing shareholder activism and the #futureofwork:

I am not really a fan of the word "woke" because I don't think most people actually understand what it means. I would say this, though: it's not really the responsibility of an organization (and its senior leaders) to solve every societal issue. They should focus on the issues right in front of them: stress, burnout, mental health challenges, empowering more women, listening better, giving people flexibility in how they work, etc. A CEO can make a statement on #diversity or #ESG and that's great, but ultimately it's usually just that: a statement. A CEO can do significantly more to reduce the stress of someone working in their HR department or Ops team. We should be focusing there. We wrote a bit about this at CULTURE PARTNERS after my appearance:

We also made a playlist on YouTube of various media appearances I've been blessed to do, including CNBC , MSNBC , NewsNation , and more:

Quote of the Week

This is from Jane Kenyon's Everything I Know About Writing Poetry:

Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.

The Third Place

A survey of 819 employees working across geographies and industries led to this?finding: ‘Results?showed, to our surprise, that respondents experienced working from a third space like a coworking site as more socially fulfilling than working from the office (64%) or from home (67%).’ And why? One big reason is?52% of respondents wanted to avoid ‘unnecessary interactions with colleagues’.?They wanted social interaction — hence the coworking — but not with the overlay of office politics: they want a ‘respite from the competitive and evaluative pressures of the office’.

"Unteaming"

From Sunsama :

Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have. That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration.

I understand this and I've seen it many times myself. We've had a lot of different narratives about #work in the last three years, and a lot of them seem to be about laziness or apathy or detachment of younger employees. In reality, the problem with work these days seems to be the pace of it, and the reason pace is struggling is because of problems around coordination, motivation, and communication. You either have too many urgent projects, or you have approval-level people (managers and senior managers) who are too busy with meetings and calls to really advance projects in a meaningful way. This is why teams underperform: it's not the people on them per se (sometimes it is), but it's more about the system and the culture set up around them.

Define a word for me

What do you think "accountability" means? Tell me in the comments.

Can you manage a disengaged employee?

Absolutely. Here's one take from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management :

I also like this take about leaning into disengagement:

SHRM 2023

My Culture Partners team will be at SHRM from June 10-14 in #lasvegas. We will be presenting this session on Tuesday, 6/13:

I'd love to see you guys there. We will be at Booth 4844.

Summer Flexibility

Is your company doing summer Fridays? Do they offer some additional form of flexibility in the summer re: kids, etc? Let me know.

We'll be back next week with more. Let us know in the comments anything you want to see us discuss.