Sometimes it’s exciting to exist in the colourful overlap at the heart of the creative Venn diagram – thrashing out boxfresh ideas, gamechanging innovations and strategic twists that will make the client squeal with delight. Sometimes it’s just humiliating. Often. Make that ‘often’. For example. One of our clients is consolidating their London operations into one spangly new… [ MORE… ]
I have recently joined a select number of chatting groups on LinkedIn. Amongst these I found people lurking with the following job titles: ‘Face-to-Face Maximiser’ and ‘Talent Liberator.’ God help us.
No matter how “friendly” you make your place of work – slow down the assembly line, introduce values and proper leadership, improve worker safety, pause the call centre traffic lights for 20 minutes each hour, have people send you engagement surveys – a place of work remains a place of work: a factory, a call centre, a retail… [ MORE… ]
“Please excuse me. I need to make water.” With this, my new American friend casually tossed her napkin on the table and left. Leaving me to reflect on this curious turn of phrase. I understood what she meant of course. Otherwise I’d have tugged her sleeve and gestured pointedly at that unopened bottle of San Pellegrino. Or questioned… [ MORE… ]
Brands are important. Yes, they can be shallow and no, they don’t bring about world peace nor the end of poverty, oppression nor torture. But as this world goes, they are important. In their strength or weakness ride the incomes, livelihoods and happiness of billions of ordinary people like you and me. An organisation’s brand is the particular… [ MORE… ]
When I first read the title ‘Prosocial bonuses would benefit us all ’ in Wired magazine, I imagined companies rewarding employees for high quality tweets, posts and blogs*. The prosocial bonus idea can involve money, but is focused on employees giving it away rather than receiving it themselves. For instance, they might get to select a charity donation… [ MORE… ]
Along with questioning the pernicious concept of engagement and tearing out our corporate hair at the over-engineering of so simple an idea as an evp, WMW has long held the view that Work/Life Balance was a thoroughly unhelpful and misleading phrase. Work/Life sets up what faux-clever people would be tempted to call a false dichotomy – you have… [ MORE… ]
Gamification. You’ve probably come across this rather clunky neologism. It simply means the application of gaming mechanics to activities normally considered outside its purview. Basic example: Bullsh*t Bingo. This transfers the gaming mechanics of bingo (i.e. ticking off randomly announced items until you’ve completed your card) to an activity not usually considered play: a work meeting. Gamification. I… [ MORE… ]
Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work? Do you have a best friend at work? In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress? That is 25% of the widely-used Gallup Q12 employee engagement questionnaire. Whatever these questions might point to, there is nothing to suggest that they point… [ MORE… ]
Of course, Dear Reader, there is no such thing as climate change. Why, if there were climate change, there would have been signs of it such as the hottest, driest April ever followed by the wettest, dankest, most enervating June. Incidentally, I like the word enervating. I used to think it meant to impart energy. How wrong, Dear Reader,… [ MORE… ]
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