Yeah, but what do I get out of it?

Another interesting example of how employee demographics are changing the workplace.

A study conducted by Kelly Services, a world leader in workforce management services, outlined a global shift in workforce dynamics driven not by pay, but by a desire for fulfilling jobs.
- 51% of Gen Y responders are prepared to accept a lower wage or lesser role if their work contributes to something more important or meaningful.
- 62% of Gen X plan to look for a new job within a year.
- 46% of baby boomers, 35% of Gen Y, and 42% of Gen X say their career goals are not being advanced in their current job.

The overriding theme is people want their jobs to provide a degree of emotional fulfillment, even if it means sacrificing money and status to achieve it. Various employee types and motivation:

- Recognition for work and time structure.
- Recognition of their values and conviction, and are engaged by knowing their opinions matter, their conviction is respected, and that the mission of the organization is being upheld.
- Playful contact, preferring that their interactions be upbeat, fun, and stimulating.
- Knowing that they are unconditionally valued as a person.
- Solitude
- Lots of action in a short timeframe.

For effective solutioning, you gotta orientate

The challenge, at the end of the day, is to ensure we have the bandwidth to optimize.

We all suffer through poorly written internal communication demonstrating the author has fallen in love with bizspeak, where perfectly useful words have been misappropriated for a new use.

How does this descent into indecipherable acronyms and meaningless jargon happen?
Lynn Espinoza, the president of Speak! Communications, suggests it’s because every company has both its own culture and its own language. We all move so fast that it’s  more efficient to develop corporate shorthand. These short-hand references are meaningless to the outside world but well understood within the corporate micro-culture.

That works to a point, she says, but says the rationale doesn’t work for the awful jargon, however. Upper management uses jargon to sound powerful; lower levels use it to sound important, she argues.

Whatever the rationale, it impedes effective communication, both oral and improvement. And if we don’t each make an effort to get back to basic English, we’ll be doomed to read pronouncements such as: "It's all a matter of the specifics of who you're looking at and what you're talking to depending on where you are in the world."

Your favorite words or phrases?

So the Wall Street Journal reports that e-mail's reign is over. Twitter and Facebook are now king.

Further, the WSJ says this " promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate — in ways we can only begin to imagine." There's usually several reasons behind a technology shift, but the article suggests the "always-on connection" created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster and more fun than e-mail.

Fun and immediacy are great, but are we losing a sense of proportion and context? Sheer speed can overwhelm us with information, and demand hasty reaction or response. We may also lose some personal touch when we don't use e-mail.

It always seems to come down to moderation. Everything has a place, but there's no one solution.

Why we have trouble juggling

A growing body of studies suggest that juggling several activities at once may be less valuable than many people assume.

The reason, researchers say, is that the brain can effectively perform only one difficult task at a time. A Michigan professor found that when someone tried to multitask, important neural regions must switch back and forth, taking time and creating inefficiencies.

UCLA researchers used brain imaging to show that multitaskers were less effective learners. According to that research, a person focused on a single task remembers what he has learned using the hippocampus, a part of the brain critical to storing and recalling information.

But when that person multitasks — like trying to learn something new while driving — the brain relies more on the striatum, a part of the brain used more for learning motor skills.

The researchers concluded, “Don’t multitask while you are trying to learn something new you hope to remember.”

“The brain is fundamentally built to unitask,” says Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford.

And here's another sobering thought. Research shows that the brains of heavy multitaskers can become so accustomed to hopping from task to task that they have trouble focusing on longer, more in-depth ones.

This is your life

October is work/life month --an article on IBM's intranet offers six secrets to help you effectively integrate your personal life and your work life.

I don't like the term work/life, which suggests they are somehow separate components. Work is more tightly integrated in all of our lives than even 5 years ago, driven by our ability to stay connected 24/7, heavier workloads, and the need to work with colleagues in different time zones. I think in terms of life balance, keeping in perspective my various roles as an IBMer, husband, father, son, etc.