Discussion topics

It’s difficult to be productive when you work at home. Sometimes, you are busy all day and don't make any progress on important work.

Some people tell themselves to “Try harder!” or blame themselves for not achieving enough. Other people work with a long to-do list and try to do many tasks at the same time. But these solutions aren’t helpful.

Instead, you should do this:

1. Write a long to-do list.
2. Choose one task from that list. If you choose something big, break it into smaller tasks.
3. Put away your long list. Don’t look at it again until you’ve finished your first task.

After you’ve finished the task, cross it off the long list, and choose another one.

You will be more productive if you follow this method.

How do you feel about total honesty in the workplace? Most often, in order to avoid the discomfort of offending someone, bosses, managers and colleagues find inventive ways of giving feedback that skirt around the real truth. In fact, as we develop our communication skills to navigate work relationships, we learn many phrases and expressions to soften our language and say things indirectly that otherwise could be said much more directly.

One of the world’s most revolutionary entertainment companies claims to owe its phenomenal success to just the opposite approach. At Netflix, constant innovation is the key and CEO Reed Hastings wants only the absolute best talent on the market in order to achieve it – he calls it ‘talent density’. To attract the most brilliant, creative, hard working people, Netflix pays them up to ten times the going rate and assures its select hires complete freedom (there are no vacation or expense policies). Netflix makes no promises of job security or long careers. Its model is that of a high-performance ‘team’ - not a ‘family’ - and among themselves they practice something called ‘radical candour’. It breaks down as follows:

1. Trust your team.

2. Be radically honest.

3. And never, ever try to please your boss.

If radical candour works for Netflix, could it work for other companies which also rely on innovation? There would be less need for translating the hidden messages lost in polite  language. Most managers and colleagues could indeed be better at giving – and receiving – direct feedback. But, on the other hand, there is a lot to be said for coded communication as well. Work is where people learn to manage social interactions and transparency doesn’t necessarily work in all cultures.

The United Nation declared a “Decade of Indigenous Languages”, beginning on January 1, 2022. There are currently over 7000 languages in the world, but roughly 40% of those languages are endangered, as adults no longer speak the language to their children. According to the U.N., one language is lost every two weeks. 

Languages become extinct due to colonization, urbanization and globalization. Colonists may purposely try to eradicate the language and culture of the indigenous people. When indigenous people leave their homelands to find work in cities, they need to speak the dominant language to survive. And young people need to use it to participate in today's global world.

Reviving an endangered language is no easy task. Remaining native speakers must be tracked down, grammar and pronunciation reconstructed, and then teachers trained and provided with teaching resources. All of that costs time and money—it’s a major investment. A few places, such as New Zealand, Australia, Morocco and Canada, are making that investment. According to Australia’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Leslie Williams, “Aboriginal people have told us language is indivisible from their identity. The cultural inheritance of our Aboriginal communities is too precious to be lost.” The knowledge Indigenous cultures have of sustainable agriculture, herbal medicine and bio-diversity conservation is especially vital to today's world.

How diverse is your workplace? And how inclusive is it? While many organizations may feel prepared to answer the first question, the second often causes a bit of confusion. Isn’t it just the same question rephrased?

Rita Mitjans, ADP’s chief diversity and social responsibility officer, explains.

Diversity is the “what”; inclusion is the “how”. Diversity focuses on the makeup of your workforce—demographics such as gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.—and inclusion is a measure of culture that enables diversity to thrive. People sometimes use these terms interchangeably, but they are quite distinctly different.

So, why is it important to focus on both diversity and inclusion? Again, Rita Mitjans:

Great talent is always in demand, and organizations are in competition for top talent. Candidates evaluating whether to join an organization want to see others who look like them at the top, and work in a culture that values different perspectives and supports authentic, respectful behaviors.

According to NPR, around the year 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba on Sumatra Island in Indonesia, erupted, blowing about a thousand kilometres of vaporized rock into the air. It is by far the largest volcanic eruption we know of.

That eruption dropped roughly six centimeters of ash over all of South Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian and South China Sea. With so much ash, dust and vapor in the air, science writer Sam Kean says Toba "dimmed the sun for six years, disrupted seasonal rains, choked off streams and scattered whole cubic miles of hot ash (imagine wading through a giant ashtray) across acres and acres of plants." Berries, fruits, trees, African game became rare. Early humans, living in East Africa just across the Indian Ocean from Mount Toba, probably starved, or at least, he says, "It's not hard to imagine the population plummeting."

It is estimated that the population of Homo Sapiens—or humans—decreased to 5,000 or 10,000 and our species nearly went extinct. Little clumps of people hunted and gathered for thousands of years until, in the late Stone Age, we began to recover. But for a time there, says Sam Kean, "We damn near went extinct."

The Dalai Lama wrote an opinion piece for the Harvard Business Review about the importance of leadership and what makes a strong leader.

He says that the world is facing an emotional crisis where rates of stress, anxiety and depression are higher than ever. The focus on turning a profit often overrules a commitment to people and society. In organizations, he explains, people work closely together every day, but many feel lonely and stressed. This is because there is a lack of responsibility toward each other.

He advises leaders to be mindful towards each other, saying that the opposite of fear is trust, which boosts our self-confidence. Compassion also reduces fear, reflecting a concern for others’ well-being. He asserts that people are naturally driven by self-interest, but we need wise self-interest that is generous and cooperative, taking others’ interests also into account.

The Dalai Lama concludes that Buddhist tradition describes three styles of compassionate leadership: the Trailblazer, who leads from the front, takes risks and sets an example; the Ferryman, who accompanies those in his care and shapes the ups and downs of the crossing; and the Shepherd, who sees every one of his flock into safety before himself. 

According to The Harvard Business Review, studies on organizational change show that if you want to lead a successful transformation, communicating empathetically is critical. However, most leaders do not actually know how to do it. In fact, a survey of over 200 leading company executives found that 69% of respondents said that they were planning to launch or are currently conducting a change effort. Unfortunately, 50% of these same executives said they had not fully considered their team’s sentiment about the change.

Here are a few steps a leader must take to smoothen a transition:

Profile your audience at every stage. Change consultants typically advise leaders to create personas of various audiences when they kick-off a change initiative. Considering that people’s wants and needs will evolve throughout the process, managers should reevaluate these personas during every phase of the journey.

Tell people what to expect. While you may need to keep some facts private during a transition, the general rule is that the more informed your people are, the more they’ll be able to deal with discomfort.

Involve individuals at all levels. A transformation won’t succeed without broad involvement. Incorporating ideas about how a change would affect every member of an organization and their unique responsibilities helps every impacted individual understand their part.

According to Vox Media, the idea of a basic income was, for decades, something of a policy fantasy. However, the last few years have seen it become less fringe and more mainstream. In fact, we now have many limited basic income programs running around the world.

The general idea—that the government should give every citizen a regular infusion of money with no strings attached—has been around since the 16th century. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has given the idea fresh momentum, with the crisis generating significant financial loss and uncertainty.

Critics worry that UBI will disincentivize work and hurt the economy. They also say that it is unaffordable for the government to pay every citizen enough to live on, regardless of whether they work. So far, the evidence has not supported these critiques.

Proponents of basic income argue the best way to end poverty is by simply giving everyone money. Some also say it will help society cope with a coming era of automation-induced joblessness. And the evidence so far suggests that getting a basic income tends to boost happiness, health, school attendance, trust in social institutions and many parts of the economy, all while reducing crime, hunger, and extreme poverty.

How much should tech companies regulate information? While Facebook and Twitter have up to now chosen to err on the side of free speech, an unlikely platform has taken an important step. Pinterest found that users were searching for information on vaccines, so CEO Ben Silbermann pulled all medical information from the platform.

Vaccines have been a contentious issue in social media, but not in science. While the science is clear that vaccines save lives, there has been a reemergence of previously eradicated diseases like measles. That reemergence has been linked to disinformation shared in social media. 

Since mid-2019, Pinterest has only allowed verified sources to post medical information. While the site is admittedly smaller than the tech giants, Pinterest still boasts 291 million monthly active users. Silbermann has gone on record stating that his site has a responsibility to avoid harm, and as such is holding itself accountable for the consequences of the information that's shared on the site.

Silbermann said to Vox, "If you don’t take some responsibility for what people see, you’re at some level responsible for the downstream consequences of that."

He went on, "The lesson that everyone’s learned over the last few years is that if you want positive things to come out of internet technology, they have to be deliberately engineered that way."