It’s FRI-YAY! Take a break and check out these community-centric pieces we’ve rounded up for this special edition Friday Five.
1. Forbes reveals their top 10 predictions for 2016 workplace trends. 2016 will be a big year of change. An estimated 3.6 million baby boomers will retire in 2016 and millenialls will take over these leadership positions. This means a massive change in work style will be implemented in workplaces around the world. “This new generation will fill the leadership gap by flattening corporate hierarchies, empowering others to succeed and forcing companies to make an impact on society, not just money.” Forbes suggests that in 2016 the biggest topic of conversation will be flexibility in the workplace. With the rise of coworking spaces and remote work increasing in popularity, workers are insisting on more flexibility for better work/life balance.
2. Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! Ernesto Sirolli was an aid worker in Africa for seven years in his twenties. It taught him everything he needed to know about business. He says that in order to help someone, you have to become friends with them, and then shut up and listen. In this funny and insightful Ted talk, Sirolli talks about how his failures with projects in Africa taught him that in order to help someone you must deeply understand what they want before you can implement a plan of action. This talk resonates with our theme this month: community. “The person with the idea may not have the knowledge, but the knowledge is available.”
3. Writer Austin Kleon shares advice how to enhance creative self promotion in his new book, Show Your Work! In this interview, Kleon urges us to “pull back the curtain” and get comfortable with sharing our unique process while working on a project. Kleon uses the term “scenius”, meaning we should have a group of creative people around to have a constant collaborative relationship with. This is key for feedback and more importantly, garnering people who are invested in our work before the project is complete. Kleon says,”Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute.” Community and collaboration is key!
4. Taking a break from the positive posts for a moment of hilarity. Here is a list of the most passive-aggressive office battle we’ve ever seen. We know something of this nature would never take place within the Center 615 community, but if it ever did, we hope it’s as funny as this.
5. NPR talks to social media guru Clay Shirky about what motivates us to collaborate. He believes there is a cognitive surplus that will change society. In this talk Shirky asserts that “trillion hours a year of participatory time up for grabs ” within creative web communities and what those communities do for our culture as a whole is up to those who participate. Shirky says, “What the internet has essentially helped us rediscover, is that there are all of these non-financial motivations that we all have, like the desire to have a sense of autonomy… and you can build enormous things on that collection of intrinsic motivations, once you get away from the idea of everybody is, essentially, optimizing for time and money and nothing else.”
