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Does it ever seem to you as if we all walk around every day with what you might think of as a lens in our pockets, our own personal lens? And so when something happens in your world, you pull it out and look at the event through your lens. Now, one person's lens may say, “That’s a great development. I love it!” But your lens may say, “Are you kidding? That’s really scary and threatening, and I don’t like it at all.” And so we begin to misunderstand each other -- not only in personal life but also in the workplace.

One of the real challenges we've found in many organizations is it’s pretty easy for people in their late 50s and 60s—people we would call boomers—to have that sense of “What are they thinking?” when talking to co-workers who are in their 30s and 40s—people we would call Xers. It’s not always obvious that we see things alike, and that can lead to some issues.

This presentation excerpt explores these differences, and helps readers to understand and embrace a multigenerational workforce.

Have you ever found yourself wondering “why do we do it this way?” If not, you should. Most of today’s business organizations are perfectly designed . . . to respond to conditions that no longer exist. The ways we’ve always done things – the approaches we grew up accepting as the normal order of things – simply don’t make sense anymore. They are predicated on a set of underlying assumptions that are not valid today. These assumptions were all true in the first half of the Twentieth Century, when modern organizations were designed. None are true today. All have major implications for the way we lead, design organizations, and manage talent. Today’s organizations are ripe for change. It’s time to re-think ten key assumptions.

Most enterprise leaders are sold on on the tremendous potential new collaborative technologies present to change the way work gets done: increasing productivity, stimulating innovation, and enhancing employee engagement. But realizing the benefits is proving to be a frustrating challenge for many: How do you achieve widespread adoption? Why is it so difficult to drive real changes in the way work is done? How can you speed the adoption of productive practices in the workforce? Our new research provides answers and guidelines.

Geography significantly influences the formation of generational beliefs and behavior. Each country's unique social, political, and economic events shape specific views and attitudes among today's adults. Western generational models cannot be applied broadly to a global workforce. My latest research builds on an approach of understanding the generations by looking at the shared formative events that shaped their early years.

Over time, human beings have con­tin­u­ally evolved new ways to com­mu­ni­cate -- from the spo­ken word, to the writ­ten word, to the printed word, and onward. Each expan­sion in our com­mu­ni­ca­tion capa­bil­ity has increased the scope and rich­ness of our inter­ac­tions. Each has been accom­pa­nied by changes in the ways we live and work. Today we are on the brink of another transformation. New technologies, most of which have appeared only within the last decade, greatly amplify our abilities to interact simultaneously with large numbers of people. The frontier of human productive capacity today is the power of extended collaboration – the ability to work together beyond the scope of small groups. There are eight assumptions that are deeply embedded in the ways most organizations operate and the ways most of us think about collaboration. With the new technologies of extended collaboration, these assumptions are no longer valid. This white paper examines each one and the implications for changes necessary for success.

Increasing pro­duc­tiv­ity – mak­ing more with less – is at the core of any com­pany or any economy’s eco­nomic progress. From a soci­etal view, pro­duc­tiv­ity dri­ves higher liv­ing stan­dards and increases shared resources, for exam­ple, pro­vid­ing a gov­ern­ment with more resources to invest back into its cit­i­zens. For a com­pany, increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity has the same result – increas­ing prof­itabil­ity that can either be used to increase the wealth of employ­ees and share­hold­ers or invest back into the future of the organization.