Holidays: Yes! Weekends: No!

At Harvard Business, Tammy Erickson asks, Do We Need Weekends?

Let’s talk some more about redesigning our organizations – “hacking” the enterprise. Here’s another fundamental assumption upon which our organizations are built that I think has got to go: weekends.

I totally agree! Weekends are an outdated concept and fly in the face of a burst workplace. The idea of a prescribed "down-time" is absurd. There is no reason in this day and age that people shouldn't be free to pick their own downtime. The idea of any work function being defined by something as absurd as the clock makes no sense whatsoever. (Unless you're working in some sort of task that requires synchronicity-- like milking cows.)

That said, I think national holidays are wonderful. I love the idea of everyone enjoying some collective downtime for reflection and celebration.

Photo courtesy of Timothy K. Hamilton

The phaticness of email

From Engineers without fears-- the presence paradox - lite communication tools:

Most of our corporate communications (emails from the CEO, townhall meetings, intranet pages) position themselves as meaningful but are frequently meaningless. Instead they convey another set of messages around status, order & control. They are, in fact, almost purely phatic.

If you start looking for the phatic messages in emails, and who amongst us doesn't, it changes everything. And that is why you must use a variety of modalities for communication. Especially if you work in a multi-generational workplace. (And God help you if you don't).

Twitter vs Facebook at Publishing 2.0

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 has been living a Twitter/Facebook experiment, Web Communication Experiment: First Round Goes To Twitter, and he has declared an early winner:

Twitter is in many ways like Google — just type into a box, hit enter, and get results. Simple, elegant, highly usable. It’s self-evident how to use Twitter, also just like Google.

And yes, I am giving this post a shoutout because he points to a tweet of mine. :)