8 Things Every Business Owner Must Know About AI

8 Things Every Business Owner Must Know about AI From NPA Global By Thomas Fuhrman As an industry leader, we at NPA Global believe in sharing knowledge. With the exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI), it's crucial for every business owner to stay informed. Here are eight must-know insights about AI. 1. AI’s Role in Business Evolution Artificial Intelligence isn't just about machines and algorithms—it's about propelling business evolution. Businesses that embrace AI can expect improved operational efficiency, expedited decision-making, and superior customer experiences. 2. Understanding the Different Types of AI There are different types of AI, including Machine [...]

2023-09-09T11:39:34-04:00

HOW TO FOSTER ENGAGEMENT FROM INTROVERTS IN YOUR WORKPLACE

Introverts are often observant and insightful, but extroverts tend to shine more radiantly because of their tendency to engage directly with people. If you’re chairing a meeting or involved in an intense team discussion, you’re more likely to hear from extroverts, who talk easily and gregariously. Introverts, who are quiet and tend to feel uncomfortable in large groups, may shrink from comment and engagement in these settings. But, don’t rule introverts out because you don’t see them engage in group settings. Introverts can be very valuable in business. They tend to listen carefully and think about what’s being said. This enables them [...]

2018-01-15T00:03:06-05:00

WORKING REMOTELY: THE CURRENT SCORECARD

Remote work has become more and more common in U.S. businesses. Currently, 25% of all U.S. employees work remotely, and it is routinely cited as a perk more employees would like, at least some of the time. Recently, however, IBM moved to decrease its remote workforce. The announcement applied to its nearly 3,000-member marketing department, who were told to re-deploy to one of several physical locations. Those who choose not to work on-site in one of the offices will be let go. Similar moves have taken place in other departments.The move attracted attention in the tech-focused press such as Fast Company in part [...]

2017-12-09T01:55:10-05:00

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES THAT WORK IN A DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Effectively communicating in the office is more than just firing off a few emails or picking up the telephone. There's a degree of strategy that needs to accompany communication in the workplace. It's about intently listening to others while engaging with them on a level that allows everyone to relate. It's also about being direct and clear about the message being conveyed so as to ensure that it is entirely understood. The Importance of Effective Communication in the Workplace Productive communication in the workplace is important on numerous levels. It's involved in creating products, delivering services, engaging employees, satisfying customer needs, [...]

2018-01-29T05:42:11-05:00

ARE MEETINGS WORTH IT?

Are meetings where ideas go to die? If your meetings have let you down, you're not alone. Employees often resent meetings: a study by the American Psychological Association showed that people "who tend to be highly task and goal oriented were most negatively affected by meetings." It is true that sometimes we need to meet: not all decisions are easy to make over other methods of communication. If meetings are a necessity for an organization, how can you make them less painful and more productive?Send Out Information Before the MeetingPreparation is key for most important actions in life, so why would you [...]

2024-03-27T11:00:23-04:00

HOW TO MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT PERCEIVED AS HAVING FAVORITES ON A TEAM

Managers need to be perceived as not having favorites in the workplace. It’s a key part of business leadership. If your methods are viewed as favoritism, that perception can erode morale and trust on your team and negatively impact productivity.Of course, the more crucial part is not having favorites among your team. Frankly, that can be difficult to pull off entirely. Whether it’s because of similar interests or one person’s stellar performance, it’s human nature to like some people more than others or to see some people as better for key roles than others. The goal is establishing an environment where no one is [...]

2017-12-09T03:15:48-05:00

FINDING THE RIGHT TIME TRACKING SOFTWARE FOR YOUR VIRTUAL TEAM

You’ve stacked your virtual team with competent, reliable individuals. You’ve designed your team’s core values. The machine has been built, now how do we get it to start churning? Equipping your team with the proper technology and collaborative platforms could make or break your virtual team. Slow or distracting systems mean workflow and productivity will suffer. At the same time, if you’re unable to compare your team’s progress and outcomes with the time it takes them to complete their tasks, you will not be able to measure or assess outcomes and outputs. Forbes contributor, Michael Batalha, founder and CEO of [...]

2017-12-09T03:26:36-05:00

STOP GIVING COLLABORATION A BAD RAP

A growing number of articles are addressing the downsides of today’s culture of collaboration. Common symptoms are unproductive meetings and individual work groups driving a proliferation of apps as some of the main causes of the “collaboration overload.” Knowledge workers are being hit especially hard.A recent piece from the Harvard Business Review proposes that this phenomenon, making collaboration more burdensome than beneficial, is a symptom of a more deeply rooted organizational problem. It identifies organizational complexity and a “collaboration for collaboration’s sake” culture as the underlying issues.Pinpointing the larger issues within your organization is a big task and not one [...]

2024-03-27T08:58:48-04:00

HOW WEARABLE DEVICES AIM TO BRING HUMAN CONNECTION TO REMOTE WORK TEAMS

CEOs, company managers, and directors can often feel they’ve lost control or insight into their employees work habits and preferences. If the company is instituting new policies or trying out new company culture-building techniques but cannot see the real-time advantages of these investments, it could be a waste of time and money.To make up for the human contact lost by going virtual, CEOs now have the option to receive regular and constant feedback from their employees. By adorning a virtual team with wearable devices and badges, like the Humanyze  badge or Virgin Pulse device, employers and managers can monitor outputs, physical activity, tension, ease, [...]

2024-03-27T08:57:58-04:00

COLLABORATION TRENDS AND THE FUTURE OF THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Collaboration is good business. Wired quotes a study by Aberdeen Next-Generation Communications observing that companies who prioritize collaboration increased their performance substantially over companies that did not. Moreover, Wired argues that collaboration, in addition to being a good team performance strategy, makes good practices visible, further driving performance. It is, therefore, an optimal business strategy.Trends in CollaborationSo collaboration as a method is here to stay in the workplace. There are four key trends.The first is technology news: Technologies abound that enable sharing and networking.The second is demographics: Millennials, who are tremendous users of digital, will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025. Generation Z, coming [...]

2024-03-27T08:57:11-04:00

SECRETS TO SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION

“At the core of most successful organizations are people who work well together,” Adrienne Sanders writes in Stanford Business. “Happy collaborators are typically more productive and are less apt to look elsewhere for employment. But what are the circumstances that lead people to want to team up over and over again?” New research by Stanford’s Daniel McFarland suggests that the reasons people continue to collaborate with others in their professional networks are quite different from the motives that led them to begin those relationships in the first place. “Relationships, including professional partnerships, often begin because two (or more) individuals who work [...]

2017-12-09T16:20:50-05:00

HOW GENERATION Z IS CHANGING THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

The Millennials have been the coming generation for a while. But the cohort that follows them, Generation Z, are either on the entry rungs of job ladders or about to get there. Generation Z is the generation born between 1995 and the early 2000s, while, of course, the Millennial generation precedes them. Right now, at 79 million strong, Generation Z makes up more than one-quarter of the U.S. population, the largest single cohort. By 2020, though, they are expected to constitute one-third of the total U.S. population. Because of these numbers, knowing their characteristics is an important part of leadership. They are [...]

2017-12-09T16:54:57-05:00

REMOTE WORKERS CAN BE HAPPIER AND MORE PRODUCTIVE

Despite some resistance from middle management and the occasional exception like Yahoo, remote work is becoming the norm — and for good reason. A 2014 study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that remote employees experienced greater contentment, increased productivity and were less likely to quit. The author of the study, Nicholas Bloom, states, “The more robotic the work, the greater the benefits, we think. More research needs to be done on creative work and teamwork, but the evidence still suggests that with most jobs, a good rule of thumb is to let employees have one to two days a week at [...]

2017-12-09T18:59:14-05:00

5 SUCCESS TIPS FOR WORKING REMOTELY

The average full-time American employee spends one third of their day working, five days a week, according to the Center for Disease Control. That means your coworkers, your daily tasks, and the work culture you surround yourself with can be just as important as the relationship, activity, and environmental decisions you make with the other two thirds of your life. Think of yourself when you were younger - when a child goes to school each day, is it just a place where they spend a third of their day, being watched after, or is school a fundamental building block [...]

2017-12-09T19:19:26-05:00

HOW BEST TO COLLABORATE

Collaboration drives so much in a workplace. Collaborative teams have a deeper sense of trust, are more willing to take risks, and are supportive of each other more consistently. It’s a powerful trait to infuse into any work team. How best to collaborate depends on many factors: the teams, the work, the need and the project. Yet there are common traits every effective collaborative workplace shows. Business Strategy and Types of Collaborations In a recent book, Heidi K. Gardner, a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, describes “smart collaborations” as falling into one of three categories: Employees use individual and specialized [...]

2017-12-09T19:31:16-05:00

E-MAIL VERSUS FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION: MAXIMIZING IMPACT

E-mail is a dominant mode of information dissemination in many corporations. It’s just as dominant overall, of course. But increasingly, communications from upper management to the company at large, from supervisors to their reports, among team members, and between departments are all shared via e-mail. E-mail is often the default mode of communication. The adoption of e-mail as a communications tool has clearly had benefits for business strategy. It is quick, convenient, ensures targeted receipt, and is pretty much universal. Face-to-Face Is Much More Effective But it also has some downsides. A recent Harvard Business Review article noted that, [...]

2017-12-09T22:07:54-05:00

HOW TO LISTEN BETTER AT MEETINGS

We all know that communication in meetings -- especially virtual meetings -- is often less than optimal. The number of questions, differing perspectives, repetition, and multiple points of view often creates a kind of static where it’s difficult to say what goals were furthered during the meeting time. Meeting goers don’t always remember what was said. The Wall Street Journal indicates that people remember just 10% of the material imparted in face-to-face communications, of which meetings are a subset.So, how can you improve meeting communication? Listen better. Have a Listening System in Place A recent Harvard Business Review suggests note-taking as a system of both [...]

2017-12-09T22:16:36-05:00

SHOULD YOUR BUSINESS JOIN A COWORKING SPACE?

WeWork’s coworking spaces offer fruit-infused water, lively designs, and an open community. As Andrew Rice described it in Bloomberg, “WeWork has cast itself as a new kind of workplace for the post-recession labor force and a generation that has never known a cubicle. It aspires to make your job a place you never want to quit.” There’s no office politics and a lot of opportunities to laugh and network at free events like Friday evening happy hours. Coworking spaces like WeWork are on the rise, and for good reason. The Harvard Business Review defines coworking spaces as, “membership-based workspaces where diverse groups of freelancers, [...]

2017-12-10T01:21:04-05:00

WHY GOOD DATA IS CRITICAL FOR COLLABORATION

It is universally acknowledged that good data can help company performance. In the human resources field, for example, data can help identify why top performers leave, what might be done to retain them, and how to make more employees satisfied going forward. In operations, it can help identify what processes are more productive. Across the board, data can be used to pinpoint the characteristics of creative teams. Data analysis can identify what characteristics make a team malfunction — and then be part of the suggestions to correct the impediments.Good company data is an essential part of business strategy.Yet, what constitutes “good data” [...]

2017-12-10T02:03:49-05:00

HOW WORK STYLE CAN IMPACT COLLABORATION

One of the key factors that can enhance collaboration in a workplace is to identify the work styles of each member of a team. Each member of a team may have different work styles, which involve personality, focus, and even the way in which information is processed. Although the word “diversity” in corporate life is often used to refer to gender and ethnic group representation, different work styles are a form of diversity that needs to be acknowledged and striven for. Ideally, employees bringing different styles to the table would create synergy. However, far too often, teams may founder and those [...]

2017-12-10T02:18:32-05:00

ASSESSING THE VALUE OF A “LIKE”

With the rise of social media, business strategy in marketing departments followed the "like." Endorsements on social media channels like Facebook was thought, axiomatically, to lead to increased sales. That's one of the reasons that so many organizations have social media pages.Social media engagement, so the theory goes, leads to more sales, both to "likers" and their social networks.What Is the Value of a Thumbs-Up?The exact value of a "like" or other social media approval, however, has been disputed for years. A roundup by Business Insider several years ago revealed that the values of likes was, on the whole, fairly negligible, ranging [...]

2024-03-27T11:05:00-04:00

VARIETIES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – AND HOW BUSINESSES USE AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is frequently the focus of technology news. There is a marked tendency, however, to treat AI as if it were a singular thing. The Varieties of AI It isn't. A recent article in Wired points out that there are many varieties of artificial intelligence. If you hear of deep neural networks, for example, you are reading about a pattern recognition system. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google all use neural networks. Another form of AI uses probabilistic programming. This type of AI uses the hypotheses of programmers, and then use data generated by AI to test and refine those hypotheses. [...]

2017-12-10T21:50:01-05:00

ENTERING THE POST-MOBILE (PHONE) AGE

In a post-mobile world, we will be connected via devices with billions of other objects, from refrigerators to cars.In a post-mobile world, the lines will blur. An interconnected network of devices and objects will offer better connectivity and functionality. In the early 2000s, mobile devices like the Palm and Blackberry were revolutionary, but could not match the computing power of a desktop computer. As mobile technology improved, the smartphone (and laptop and tablet) became ubiquitous, giving users the power of a desktop that could function as well as any desktop computer when a powerful wireless signal was available.And now, with [...]

2017-12-11T02:26:41-05:00

EMPLOYEES APPRECIATE AUTONOMY: LESSONS FROM CO-WORKING SPACES

The Harvard Business Review points out an even more intriguing statistic about co-working spaces: Workers in them thrive much more than workers in conventional offices.Autonomy and Flexibility ValuedThe HBR wanted to know why employees were far more likely to thrive.A big reason was the autonomy and flexibility co-working spaces offer. Jobs can be done at any time. Most co-working spaces are open to members 24/7. Workers can choose to work early or late and leave afternoons open for errands or work-outs at the gym. They have control over how, when, and where they perform their job tasks.In addition, co-working spaces offer a community, but [...]

2017-12-11T21:24:46-05:00

IS THERE A RIGHT TO DISCONNECT? E-MAIL BE OFF LIMITS OFF HOURS?

IS THERE A RIGHT TO DISCONNECT: OR, SHOULD E-MAIL BE OFF LIMITS OFF HOURS? Work It! Staff February 1, 2017  Collaberation French workers seemingly have it made: 35-hour work weeks and a large amount of vacation each year. As of January 1, 2017, a law went into effect covering employees in companies with more than 50 employees. The "right to disconnect" law requires companies to designate hours when staff members may neither send nor respond to emails. The law is designed to help employees who leave the office, but never quite leave the work, bound by an electronic tether with emails and texts [...]

2017-12-11T22:04:26-05:00

THE EMERGENCE OF GENERATION X CHANGES DIGITAL WORK

THE EMERGENCE OF GENERATION X CHANGES DIGITAL WORK Work It! Staff January 13, 2017 Collaberation While Baby Boomers and Millennials get a lot of press, Generation X is moving to the fore in terms of exerting influence in corporations, politicals, and digital start-ups. Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, originally got attention because of their critical mass. Born in the wake of World War II, they were one of the largest generations in U.S. history. (The Boomer cohort had 77 million members. Millennials have 83 million. Generation X totals 65 million people.) Millennials, born from 1978 to 1995, get [...]

2017-12-11T22:03:32-05:00