More and more companies understand the need to be present at social media but not many of them do social media properly and effectively. Why? Because in order to succeed in social media we can no longer treat it as yet another communication channel. It can’t be a random activity. It should be aligned with the overall strategy. Many companies take up SM but have no idea what for and what they will do there. Then it’s like “teen sex” - Everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.”

Two weeks ago Facebook launched a new social plugin (”like” button) that works with the Open Graph protocol as part of the strategy to make the Web more social and personalized. The button spreads across the internet and it’s clear that websites’ owners quickly embraced the new social plugin.

There is already a lot of controversy around the plugin. Some people wonder how it will influence the privacy on the net? Many people feel Facebook will soon dominate most of our online experience. Some don’t like that FB is selling user’s private information to marketing companies. Will it affect Twitter or Digg? How will it change advertising and marketing strategies? Time will tell.

Have you ever wondered how many hours do you actually work at the office? Excluding lunch breaks and other breaks obviously. Have you ever calculated your productivity level during the day? How many hours are you able to work uninterrupted? If at all possible.

In my last post about teams I claimed there is no universal recipe for breeding a jelled team. A few days ago I came across a great book Peopleware, first published 20 years ago and then updated a few times. The authors explain what it takes for the team to jell. In order to illustrate the team creation process I would like to tell the story that was told in their book. This is a story of The Black Team-a legend in the computing industry who changed the fate of IBM forever.

The value of having jelled teams in the company or working in one is pretty obvious. Such teams are more productive and work more efficiently since they feel comfortable with each other. Can we use some magic trick to create a good team? Not really. For managers it’s usually easier to point out team killing factors rather than give a recipe for a healthy team.

Recently, I’ve come cross an HBR article “The Innovator’s DNA”, in which they explain what makes some people innovative and what sets them apart from the rest of us? They also tried to answer the question why some companies are innovative and some are not? Where do the best ideas come from? The article is based on the study carried out by the professors from  Harvard, Insead and BrighamYoung University.

After 6 years they identified 5 secrets of being innovative.The findings are optimistic. The researchers say it’s not an inherent feature but it’s a set of skills that can be learned. According to the article, creativity is close to 80 percent learned and acquired. This means there is hope for almost everybody!

The company life is all about communication be it direct, face-to-face or virtual and remote with colleagues, clients and company partners. Have you ever counted how many meetings you attend in the period of a month or a year? Many people’s work days consist of meetings almost entirely. After all these hours of discussing most of them say “Now I can get back to work and finally focus on my job”.

Do they not treat meetings like part of their work then? What does this sentence imply? Do they indirectly send the message that the time spent in a meeting was simply counter-productive?

We all know that only the “learning organizations” have a bright future ahead. Knowledge is the key predictor of success. So why aren’t we eager to share our knowledge? Why often people working for the same organization don’t cooperate?

Nowadays, with the development of IT industry companies give their employees the variety of tools to make their work more productive and efficient. But it requires a lot of time to adopt them and adapt to new working patterns. Often the managers first have to break down people’s resistance to change  and innovation.

The question is- are all these tools a help or a hindrance? Do they actually stimulate collaboration?

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The beginning of a new year is always a great time to start moving your career in a better direction. It’s pretty common that at that time many employees set Workplace and Career New Year’ s Resolutions.

This is also the time for looking back on what you achieved last year, what failures you faced and what lessons you learned. Based on that many of us start planning their career paths all over again.

But can you actually plan it? Does a strict career path limit your perspective? Or maybe it’s just pointless since we are unable to control external factors that affect us?

In the software development world employers always look for creative coders. Such employees come up with innovative ideas which may save a lot of time when developing functionalities that are hard to create. They see doors where others see walls. My colleague once said that all best ideas result from coders’ laziness. They use their creativity to make their life simpler. As I mentioned in my previous post, the best coders don’t aim for complexity while missing the obvious solutions. They usually are faithful to simplicity. But this requires creativity.