1. Harvard Business Review "It's More Important to Be Kind than Clever" by Bill Taylor
Overview: This article is about how efficiency should never come at the expense of humanity. Before asking how your business can improve its productivity, efficiency or analytical procedures, it is important to recognize that it exists for humans. Reading this article would make you think about Corporate Social Responsibility again.
Key Lessons:
- If a business sacrifices humanity in order to make more profits, it will lose its people and customers.
- It is more important for a business to be geared towards humans and their needs.
- Panera Bread Case: Although a small act of kindness does not normally make headlines on newspapers, it does these days thanks to SNS. Word of mouth is extremely powerful these days on Facebook and Twitter because it can spread very quickly. Hence, positive word of mouth can even beat the payoffs of traditional marketing methods.
- Technology, business analytics and efficiency are shaping today's world. However, we must remember that our business/company/organization exists for people. If our company has a promising product which is expected to bring high profits but the product has a low chance of harming the user, we must rethink about this product. Even if the chance of harming the people is significantly low, people and their safety come before our profits.
Overview: This short article discusses how to be effective as a compassionate leader. Reading this article would make you realize that being compassionate isn't as easy as you think.
Key Lessons:
- Compassion can enhance productivity and bring profits.
- It is important for a leader to confront difficult situations and drop the fear of being unkind to his people. We should not confuse compassion with kindness. Compassionate leaders care about their people, but they also know when to engage in tough conversations in order to fuel their development and growth.
Overview: This article shocks you by throwing a surprising fact: remote workers are more engaged and committed than employees whom you work with in the office. The author provides why this is the case by giving you realistic views on the office environment as opposed to the virtual environment.
Key Lessons:
- People at work these days overuse emails and messengers in order to communicate with each other. Even for people who sit metres away from each other in the office, actual face-time or an in-person conversation does not happen because technology has made it so much easier to communicate with someone just sitting at your desk.
- When a leader is physically distant from others in an organization, he will make extra effort to make contact. He will try harder to connect with the people and get to know the people better.
- Virtual meetings tend to be more focused and concise because each remote worker has other duties in his life. Everyone on the team values his time and respects other workers' time.
- It beats our common sense, but remote workers tend to be more engaged and productive than people who work in the office.
- Obviously, the engagement or commitment of workers is case by case. If you are a leader working with people in the office, remember to increase face-time with your employees. It is important for a leader to be approachable so that his employees feel comfortable in the office, leading to better in-person communication and teamwork.
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