Harvard Business Review-Have you changed your behavior as a result of the "great recession?" According to a survey from the Department of Labor and a New York Times/CBS News poll, Americans are spending less time shopping and more time engaging in simple, low-cost activities with family and friends.

These include "organizational, civic and religious" pursuits; home-based hobbies like gardening and cooking; family sports such as hiking; and cultural endeavors like going to museums and movies. For many people this may be an obvious result of having less money to spend. But the dramatic climb in the savings rate (from less than 1 percent of income at the end of 2007 to more than 4 percent through most of 2009) suggests that even those with extra money are acting differently.

From an economic point of view, these shifts are generally good news. Americans seem to have learned (at least for now) that highly-leveraged spending sprees are not sustainable and have painful consequences. This may help dampen future speculative bubbles and provide a basis for reducing debt over time.

The real questions, however, are whether these behavioral shifts signal new patterns for American society and how these shifts might trigger changes in organizations. For example, many companies depend on large cadres of workaholic professionals and middle managers who put in long hours, are available around the clock, and are willing to sacrifice family and personal time for business activities.

Furthermore, managers in most U.S.-based organizations take either less vacation time, or less consecutive time off than their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. But now that these managers have experienced the psychic satisfaction of less work and more personal time — even if it was forced by recessionary cutbacks and less available cash — will they be willing to return to the intense treadmill?

A Boston Consulting Group experiment, reported in Harvard Business Review in October 2009, suggests that it may be beneficial not only for managers and professionals to spend more time away from work, but also for the organization. In this study, BCG required its most intensely workaholic team members to take pre-scheduled, regular (one day per week) and complete (no phone calls or emails) time off during the course of a project. Not surprisingly, after some personal adjustments, the consultants enjoyed the time off. However, BCG also found that the project teams improved their communications and developed more innovative and efficient ways of working with each other.

Similarly, a series of pilots on flexible work arrangements sponsored by a non-profit group called the BOLD Initiative found that when teams were given the freedom to arrange work schedules around their personal needs and desires, it not only increased employee satisfaction but also improved team productivity.

Obviously there is no definitive answer as to whether the personal shifts sparked by the recession will be permanent. It may be in the best interest of companies however to encourage these changes in behavior with managers, professionals, and other high-pressured work groups. Who knows, for many of us, less work may not only be more satisfying, but also more productive.

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer & Associates a Stamford, Connecticut consulting firm and the author of Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done

Harvard Business Review-If you are finding your job a little boring, you aren't alone. There are many who feel trapped in their current jobs since the economy has removed a few of the seats in the corporate game of musical chairs. But I challenge you to see that it's actually you, not the job, that's boring. First, see if you recognize any of these hard truths:

1. You're on autopilot.
When bored, our brains shift into autopilot. This isn't a good thing for you or your company. Unfortunately, shifting into autopilot is what our brains do best. Our past experiences create the neural pathways upon which our survival depends. The brain interprets current reality and responds to similar situations using behaviors that have served us well in the past. These shortcuts help us save time, but can also sap our interest.

2. Your energy level is less than impressive.
When we are bored, our energy level dissipates and we lose the focus and purpose so necessary to excel at the job at hand. Our brains no longer work for us and actually start working against us.

3. You've become a conformist.
It's not unusual for leaders to start sleeping on the job once they hit year three or four. At this point, they have molded the organization in their own image. They know their people, processes, and technology aren't perfect, but have adjusted to their imperfections and lose sight of the opportunities for improvement. Every day brings the same set of problems and the same responses. From a performance perspective, the sharp "blacks" and "whites" so obvious on Day 1 become indistinguishable shades of gray. "I can't believe what's going on here!" slowly but surely becomes "I can't believe how tired I am!"



So what's the solution?

Wake yourself up by renewing your leadership agenda. Re-engage by mentally firing yourself and spending the next few weeks acting as if you just joined the company. This entails assessing the current situation anew with the help of key stakeholders. Make it a disciplined process.

This isn't as easy as it sounds. Although you are bored, you are also extremely busy. Your only choice is to extract yourself from day-to-day operations while you redefine your organization's future. It's time to delegate or defer and make sure that the "First 90 Days" activities take priority in your calendar. Activities such as clarifying strengths and opportunities, confirming the mandate for change, and determining how to better allocate existing resources.

This approach is uncomfortable and definitely not boring. Take heart that your organization can operate just fine (for a while) without you and it's far better to fire yourself mentally today rather than wait for your organization to do so — for real.

7 Ways to Be Happier at Work

by Jeff Stibel


A recent report listed the happiest nations in the world. Guess what? The US didn't even make it into the top ten. So much for the American dream.

Why are we so unhappy? Let's start by looking at the origin of the word. Happy is derived from the Icelandic word happ, meaning luck or chance. Is happiness then, by its very definition, elusive due its randomness? Nassim Taleb certainly thinks so, as he expressed in his bestselling book Fooled by Randomness. But this is clearly not the case for the top 10 happiest countries.

In his book, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, the Dalai Lama — arguably a very wise and happy man — suggests that true happiness can be attained only by training the mind. So much for Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert's notion of Stumbling on Happiness (despite the title, he too argues that we can train our minds to be happier). With that in mind, here are a number of suggestions that I hope can turn our collective frowns upside-down:

1. Smile. Turns out, smiling is directly linked to happiness. It may have started as a correlation but, over time, the brain linked the two. Don't believe me? Try this: smile (a nice big smile) and attempt to think of something negative. Either you will stop smiling or you won't be able to hold the negative thought.

2. Stop worrying. Worrying happens to be one of humanity's best traits. It is the underlying emotion behind foresight, planning, and forecasting. We worry because some future event is uncertain and that feeling is a cue for us to start thinking about how to address it. The problem is, we worry too much about things that are out of our control (like the economy, stupid). The US has one of the highest rates for mental disease and yes, worry is among the leading indicators. While it's true that there are plenty of things to worry about these days, take a deep breath, America, and stop sweating the small stuff.

3. Take a break. The US is one of the most overworked industrialized nations. But this is counterproductive for a nation of "knowledge workers." Overworking people to exhaustion is a horrible way to extract knowledge from people. Taking a break provides an opportunity to reflect and often it is during such times when the best ideas, our deepest insights, emerge. I insist on taking lunches out of the office; I insist that my colleagues do the same. Call it a siesta, naptime, or a mini-vacation. It works for many of the happier nations too.

4. Do things differently. Part of the problem at work for many people is boredom. We are stuck in a rut where we come in and do the same thing over and over and over again. Get your enthusiasm back by doing things differently. Make every effort to learn, to grow, and to challenge yourself. Take on more responsibility or attempt something you never thought you were capable of doing. Even if your responsibilities don't allow for much flexibility, try a different approach to your existing responsibilities.

5. Stop managing and start leading. If you're in management, you need to find ways to motivate and stimulate your employees. How? Stretch their minds. Empower your team by giving them more responsibility, more decision-making power, more autonomy. Equally important: be inclusive. Explain what is happening in the company as a whole and give your employees a broader perspective on how their jobs influence the overall business.

6. Delegate. One of the most destructive and counterproductive byproducts of the downsizing era is fear — many managers are scared to let go of control for fear that doing so will make them obsolete. I have news for you: if you feel that way, you already are obsolete. Being controlling is bad for business, not to mention bad for your physical and mental health. The best leaders always look for people better, smarter, and more capable than themselves.

7. Have fun. Here is some tough advice: If you don't like what you are doing, stop doing it. Life is too short to not have fun. I love what I do and when I stop loving it, I do something else. Even in this economy, you will be in high demand if you are good at what you do — and can do it with a smile on your face.

What are your tips for being happier at work?

Jeffrey M. Stibel is an entrepreneur and brain scientist. He studied business and brain science at MIT Sloan and Brown University, where he was a brain and behavior fellow. Stibel has authored numerous academic and business articles on a variety of subjects and is the named inventor on the US patent for search engine interfaces. He is currently President of Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW) and serves on academic Boards for Tufts and Brown University, as well as the Board of Directors for a number of public and private companies.

source: Harvard Business

President Obama, here is a deceptively simple action item to put on your agenda for business growth, working families, and a green future: Make it the norm for everyone to work at home at least one day a week. That single step could raise productivity, save energy, decrease pollution, reduce traffic congestion, cut household expenses, increase quality of family life, and keep educated women in the work force.

Workers of the world, go remote!

During this time of economic crisis and reinvention of global capitalism, one of the things crying out for reinvention is the rigid workplace of the last century. It is amazing in the digital age that most work is still associated with industrial age work rhythms and the symbolic chains that tie workers, knowledge and otherwise, to fixed locations. Flexible workplaces with flexible hours and days are long in coming.

Many U.S. cities have become commuter nightmares as urban sprawl sends people across longer distances in their cars every week day. According to the 2008 U.S. Census estimates, 84 percent of the U.S. population lives within 363 metropolitan areas that spill over central city boundaries and, in some cases, over state lines. Jobs within central business districts have been declining, while jobs outside a ten-mile ring have been growing. Vehicle miles traveled have increased twice as fast as population growth.

The daily commute to work has high costs in time, aggravation, fuel consumption, and pollution. If it became a staggered commute of four days a week for everyone, then perhaps 20 percent of the traffic could be gone, vanished, poof, just like that.

Choosing how long to work and on what schedule has long showed productivity benefits. People are less stressed when they can adjust their hours or days to family or personal needs. A greater feeling of control is associated with more energy and better health, studies show, making those workers more productive. Some savvy senior executives stay out of their offices occasionally even when not traveling, because they get more done in a setting with no interruptions, at home or elsewhere. The CEO of a global professional services firm has made a quiet table in a restaurant his preferred office-away-from-the-office, sometimes for the entire day.

For many working parents, the chance to work remotely is the primary way to achieve work-life balance. Many women leave high-powered corporate and professional careers when they have children, frequently starting their own businesses they can run from home, because there is no flexibility and no middle ground between the all-out grind at a workplace demanding physical presence or opting out. A norm of remote work for everyone would ease the strain.

It is a 24/7 world of work anyway. Somebody is always awake and working somewhere in the world at any time, and he might be your customer, vendor, or teammate. If a professional can have a conference call in her pajamas in the evening after the kids are in bed, why shouldn't she spend the next day at home, finishing the report while they play nearby? Free agents and independent contractors have this privilege but at the cost of security and fringe benefits.

Technology exists to make remote work feasible and effective. Cell phones have liberated people from desks. Cisco's telepresence capabilities make it possible to feel as though you are in the meeting room with people anywhere in the world, sitting just across the conference table. Imagine that in the home. The need for high-speed network connections is another argument for universal broadband and wi-fi access, with tax deductibility or reimbursement to employees for the connections to their home, as IBM does in India, for example.

The barriers are the usual human ones. Without a culture of strong accountability, collaboration, trust and personal responsibility, remote work doesn't work. That culture is missing in too many organizations. Managers don't always know how to coordinate and communicate with people they do not see face to face; they must value the work product and not the face time. Leadership is important. People need clear goals, deadlines, and performance metrics. Team members need trust and the ability to rely on and fill in for one another. And just as managers should not discriminate against people who choose more remote work time, those who work flexibly need to make sure they do not appear to put their personal lives above their commitments to colleagues, companies, and outcomes.

To reinvent the work place, we need public officials to put the infrastructure and permission in place, companies to start the change process, and people to learn how to work together with new norms. With Stephanie Khurana, founder of several high-tech companies and now the flexible consulting firm, Higher Aims, I want to start a dialogue about etiquette for the flexible workplace. Let's do it with the time we are saving and the energy we are conserving by not going into the office one day a week.

Harvard Business