The Weekly Pulse is my content curation and my highlights from readings, books, podcasts, insights, and everything I discovered during the week.
So, let’s go with some discoveries from the week!
#1 – The Necessary Art of Persuasion
#2 – Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek”
#3 – The First Rule Of Being Your Own Boss? Be Authentic
#4 – Redesigning the Post-Pandemic Workplace
#5 – The Age of Continuous Connection
The Necessary Art of Persuasion
Source: Harvard Business Review
Author: Jay A. Conger
Summary: Business today is largely run by teams and populated by authority-averse baby boomers and Generation Xers. That makes persuasion more important than ever as a managerial tool. But contrary to popular belief, the author asserts, persuasion is not the same as selling an idea or convincing opponents to see things your way. It is instead a process of learning from others and negotiating a shared solution. Persuasion can be a force for enormous good in an organization, but people must understand it for what it is: an often painstaking process that requires insight, planning, and compromise.
3 Highlights:
“… A persuader must match his or her emotional fervor to the audience’s ability to receive the message…“
“… It’s important for people to understand persuasion for what it is–not convincing and selling but learning and negotiating…“
“… Numbers do not make an emotional impact, but stories and vivid languages do…”
I’ve read this original one from the magazine. A copy is available in the link below.
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Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek”
Source: The New Yorker
Author: Cal Newport
Summary: Given the book’s history and reception, you might assume that “The 4-Hour Workweek” would have become a popular guide for our current moment, in which the pandemic-induced Great Resignation is driving knowledge workers to ask themselves similar questions. We’re now engaged in a national conversation about many of the same fundamental questions that Ferriss probed fifteen years earlier.
3 Highlights:
“… At one point, Ferriss recommends calling in sick for two days but still working while at home, to later prove to your skeptical boss that virtual work is literally feasible…“
“… It’s hard not to wonder that if we had been more willing to recognize the radical nature of his dissent, and the cultural flashpoint represented by its enthusiastic reception with an unlikely crowd, we might have been caught less off guard by the upheaval we’re experiencing today…”
“… If you concentrated on the efforts that actually mattered, your professional contributions could be compressed into a handful of efficiently planned weekly hours. The rest was just for show…”
Access the full Weekly Pulse reading here >>
The First Rule Of Being Your Own Boss? Be Authentic
Source: Fast Company
Author: Daniel Pink
Summary: Perhaps the ultimate freedom is the freedom to be one’s self. But in the traditional workplace, authenticity is often neither condoned nor rewarded. Free agents, however, don’t sit around waiting for authenticity to rain down on them like a summer shower. So forget the Pledge of Allegiance. In Free Agent Nation, people take a Pledge of Authenticity.
3 Highlights:
“… In free agency, work becomes more fully integrated with who you are. That can be rewarding…“
“… But because work is more deeply woven into yourself, it can be harder to cast off–which means work can occasionally consume and even smother identity…”
“… Perhaps the ultimate freedom is the freedom to be one’s self…”
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Redesigning the Post-Pandemic Workplace
Source: MIT Sloan Management Review
Author: Gerald C. Kane, Rich Nanda, Anh Phillips, and Jonathan Copulsky
Summary: The world has experienced widespread disruption over the past year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the successful development and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, the timeline for when the so-called next normal will arrive is clearer. Work as we know it is forever changed by COVID-19. Now is the time for managers to envision the office that employees will return to.
3 Highlights:
“… If people have the option to work from home, it seems likely that they will use this time to engage either in individual-focused work or in remote meetings. When employees decide to make the effort to come into the office, it will be to engage in the types of tasks that require in-person interactions...“
“… Rethinking the workplace also opens up new opportunities for rethinking the workforce and, ultimately, work itself. When your organization is not limited to a colocated workplace, the idea of whom you can include in the workforce expands…”
“… While digital tools create opportunities to work in new ways, organizations should also look further into the future and consider how these tools might be applied to support changes in employee behavior as work is automated. Managers also must continue to rethink how they manage performance as more employees adopt a hybrid model with both remote and colocated work…”
Access the full Weekly Pulse reading here >>
The Age of Continuous Connection
Source: Harvard Business Review
Author: Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch
Summary: Thanks to technologies that enable constant, customized interactions, businesses are building deeper ties with their customers. By employing connected strategies, companies are dramatically improving their customers’ experiences, boosting their own operational efficiencies, and gaining a competitive advantage. To get the most out of these strategies, firms must understand customers’ privacy preferences, build new capabilities, and use the learning from repeated interactions to shape future ones.
3 Highlights:
“… Over time these two loops have another very important effect: They allow companies to address more-fundamental customer needs and desires…”
“… The age of buying what we have is over. If you want to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in the years ahead, connected strategies need to be a fundamental part of your business…”
“… The time to think about connected strategies is now before others in your industry beat you to it…”
Access the full Weekly Pulse reading here >>
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