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It Takes More Than Tech to Get Teams to Collaborate Effectively

Collaboration is a popular business buzzword these days due to the proliferation of mobile apps and enterprise social platforms such as Chatter, Yammer and Jive. In addition, Facebook recently unveiled a free version of its own Workplace collaboration service, along with updates to its Messenger app.

Yet moving past the latest tech hype cycles, it’s clear that collaboration is just another word for teamwork. Effective teamwork requires strong employee buy-in, a collegial workplace environment and proper tools for shared project management.

Leaders who strike the right collaborative balance improve how work gets done. It’s not enough to adopt technologies and a culture that make it easier for workers to communicate and share knowledge. Teamwork should ultimately become a business enabler, so it’s critical to focus collaborative efforts on achieving real business outcomes that spur innovations and increase productivity. Again, the two essential ingredients for successful collaboration are the underlying workforce culture and the enabling technologies.

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Crowdsourcing: Friend or Foe of KM?

Seen from a knowledge management perspective, crowdsourcing is a technique for capturing and using tacit knowledge. Often used for innovation, crowdsourcing can bypass organizational structures to obtain insights from large groups of individuals either within the company or outside it. Innovation has become a driving force for many companies; according to Forrester, more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies have appointed a chief innovation officer, and nearly 75 percent have innovation strategies. Crowdsourcing can also be a mechanism for increasing employee engagement and buy-in. The opportunity to share ideas for improving operational performance can shift employees from questioning change to supporting it.

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Getting Employees to Tell the Whole Truth When You Need to Hear It

Let’s face it. Every organization has employees who fear telling their bosses the whole truth about workplace problems because such honesty can be career-limiting. In fact, it’s likely that most employees feel this way at some point in their careers.

Employee self-censorship usually amounts to a simple act of self-preservation because nobody wants a reputation as the office complainer. Employees will often resist giving honest feedback due to concerns that their leaders may oppose suggestions for change. Or employees will stay silent in the presence of senior staff because they fear they might say the wrong thing or show up their bosses in front of other managers.

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Why CIOs Need Team Buy-in for IT Initiatives

Watch our CMO Brian Anderson explain why CIOs need the input of their teams when implementing IT initiatives.

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Business Power Tools: 8 Apps Skyhigh’s CEO Can’t Live Without

PopIn is a targeted crowdsourcing and online survey app to help executives engage employees on potential decisions, and give workers an easy line for direct feedback. Gupta said Skyhigh Networks uses PopIn to promote employee engagement across its global organization, and give the organization a more intuitive form factor than surveys to weigh in on what’s going on with the company.

“One of our missions at Skyhigh is to create a culture that matters. With offices in the Bay Area, the East Coast, the UK, and India, along with a global sales team, we are always looking for tools that can connect teams across geographies,” said Gupta. “PopIn is a tool that helps us with employee engagement on everything from logistics like meeting times to employees’ perceptions of leadership styles and company culture. Employees can quickly, easily, and frequently provide feedback without getting bogged down in a long survey. The application also makes it easy to engage with employees periodically over time, which helps us track our progress on our goals.”

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Why Employees Resist Using your Collaboration Tools

Is your association relying on the wrong tools to help staff collaborate? Possibly, but the first question you should ask isn’t whether there’s a better option. Instead, find out why your current tools are losing out to email and phone calls.

Let’s face it: We live in an era when 9-to-5 doesn’t cover your on-the-job collaboration needs.

Your employees may not work in the office part of the time. You may find yourself on the road more often than not. And you may be the big decision-maker on some major projects, no matter your current location.

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New products of the week 2.27.17

POPin 3.2.5
Key features – POPin 3.2.5 integrates with Slack and offers a comprehensive list of predetermined “recipes” that give business leaders a framework to solicit team feedback on a number of common use cases. More info.

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A Leader’s Role in Stowing the Luggage

In 2001, I was very close to being bankrupt. I had five collection departments calling and emailing me daily, threatening legal action if I did not come up with a total of almost $700,000 to repay them. My good friends Adriel and Bret were dodging the exact same calls for similar amounts they owed. Between the three of us, we did not even have $100,000 because we had not taken any pay as the company we were running was going under. Times were very bleak.

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Why Corporate Collaboration Tools are Fundamentally Flawed

These tools lack the ability to derive meaningful insights from the interactions between employees and colleagues.

Facebook Workplace and other popular corporate collaboration tools, such as Yammer, Slack, Skype, WhatsApp and Salesforce Chatter, all promise a kind of magic bullet for today’s geographically diverse workplace. And, if the goal is easier communication and a more modern channel for information sharing, then these tools can achieve some measure of success.

Where they miss the point, however, is in their ability to derive meaningful insights from the interactions that take place between and among employees.

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POPin Honors Macerich CIO as Inaugural Winner of Constellation Award

New Award Created to Recognize Leaders with Outstanding Collaborative Leadership Skills

IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ –�POPin today announced the launch of its new Constellation Award for successful leaders by naming JP Jones, CIO of Macerich, as the inaugural award winner for his effective use of crowd-solving sessions to align his IT team for shared initiatives.

POPin launched the monthly Constellation Award to recognize exceptional collaborative leadership among leaders who use POPin, the industry’s first enterprise social platform to bridge the power gaps that hurt corporate performance. The POPin crowd-solving mobile app gives employees the freedom to speak openly without fear of reprimand from management, while giving management a clear view into what’s really needed to drive successful initiatives.

POPin named Jones as the Constellation Honoree for November 2016 for his outstanding collaborative leadership, empowering his workforce, and using POPin to create buy-in for decisions affecting his team’s IT initiatives. Jones has successfully used POPin to take employee performance to the next level.

 

Jones describes his leadership style as “a consensus guy,” who credits the POPin tool for “creating buy-in amongst the troops” and “making sure everyone understands our direction.”

“When an employee thinks that they can share anonymously is when you’re really going to get the truth and the facts,” Jones said. “I love to be able to say this is what we want, versus this is what I want. It’s very important to me.”

POPin founded the Constellation Award to honor leaders who are dedicated to discovering the truth in their organizations by rooting out staff concerns and uncovering systemic problems. The award takes the form of a monthly video showcase that highlights how leaders use POPin in their organizations. Winning videos are featured on the POPin’s website, and each video will be a strong addition to the winner’s career portfolio.

“These winning leaders are high profile, charismatic individuals with success stories around innovative uses of POPin, awesome results, and fearless truth-seeking,” said Brian Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer of POPin.

About Macerich

An S&P 500 company, Macerich is one of the country’s leading owners, operators and developers of major retail real estate.� The Macerich portfolio includes unique and irreplaceable properties that hold dominant positions in the nation’s gateway markets. ? the most affluent and densely populated with significant international appeal ? set the company apart.

About POPin

POPin equips leaders to implement decisions with the buy-in of the teams doing the work. With POPin, leaders can learn the truth of what will work and what won’t from the people who will be doing the work. POPin is available as a web app and as a native mobile app for both Apple iOS and Android. POPin also provides dedicated Customer Success Consultants to customers to facilitate successful use of POPin. Headquartered in Irvine, CA, POPin is already helping organizations such as CoreLogic, Experian, Immix Group and NYU make better decisions quickly and gain buy-in along the way. For more information visit www.popinnow.com.

Media Contact
Gutenberg Communications
Michael Gallo
212-239-8594
POP@luminapr.com

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POPin Honors Macerich CIO as Inaugural Winner of Constellation Award

IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — POPin today announced the launch of its new Constellation Award for successful leaders by naming JP Jones, CIO of Macerich, as the inaugural award winner for his effective use of crowd-solving sessions to align his IT team for shared initiatives.

POPin launched the monthly Constellation Award to recognize exceptional collaborative leadership among leaders who use POPin, the industry’s first enterprise social platform to bridge the power gaps that hurt corporate performance. The POPin crowd-solving mobile app gives employees the freedom to speak openly without fear of reprimand from management, while giving management a clear view into what’s really needed to drive successful initiatives.

POPin named Jones as the Constellation Honoree for November 2016 for his outstanding collaborative leadership, empowering his workforce, and using POPin to create buy-in for decisions affecting his team’s IT initiatives. Jones has successfully used POPin to take employee performance to the next level.

Jones describes his leadership style as “a consensus guy,” who credits the POPin tool for “creating buy-in amongst the troops” and “making sure everyone understands our direction.”

“When an employee thinks that they can share anonymously is when you’re really going to get the truth and the facts,” Jones said. “I love to be able to say this is what we want, versus this is what I want. It’s very important to me.”

POPin founded the Constellation Award to honor leaders who are dedicated to discovering the truth in their organizations by rooting out staff concerns and uncovering systemic problems. The award takes the form of a monthly video showcase that highlights how leaders use POPin in their organizations. Winning videos are featured on the POPin’s website, and each video will be a strong addition to the winner’s career portfolio.

“These winning leaders are high profile, charismatic individuals with success stories around innovative uses of POPin, awesome results, and fearless truth-seeking,” said Brian Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer of POPin.

 

About Macerich

An S&P 500 company, Macerich is one of the country’s leading owners, operators and developers of major retail real estate.  The Macerich portfolio includes unique and irreplaceable properties that hold dominant positions in the nation’s gateway markets. — the most affluent and densely populated with significant international appeal — set the company apart.

About POPin

POPin equips leaders to implement decisions with the buy-in of the teams doing the work. With POPin, leaders can learn the truth of what will work and what won’t from the people who will be doing the work. POPin is available as a web app and as a native mobile app for both Apple iOS and Android. POPin also provides dedicated Customer Success Consultants to customers to facilitate successful use of POPin. Headquartered in Irvine, CA, POPin is already helping organizations such as CoreLogic, Experian, Immix Group and NYU make better decisions quickly and gain buy-in along the way. For more information visit www.popinnow.com.

Media Contact
Gutenberg Communications
Michael Gallo
212-239-8594
POP@luminapr.com

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Buy-In Matters in Business Decision-Making

Decision-making is the very essence of business. Decisions matter, from setting out a company’s high-level strategic vision to executing on its most basic daily operations.

Every decision is accompanied by uncertainty and risk, because decision-makers must simultaneously decide which paths they will not choose. The level of risk can be mitigated by gathering better information, but at some point, each decision marks a turning point from assessing a range of options to taking some concrete action.

Decisions do not get made in a vacuum; they are a function of an organization’s history, culture and leadership style. Of course, successful leadership depends on making the right decisions – at least most of the time.

What’s needed to make better decisions is an institutional framework that enables team members to quickly discover new ideas, share accountability, and engage deeply with each other. In this age of social media, workers also want workplaces that are more social and inclusive. What’s needed is a platform for real buy-in that will motivate workers to become accomplices in the organization’s master plan.

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Facebook Workplace jolts enterprise collaboration but misses point of next-gen social

The landscape for enterprise social just got more interesting with Facebook’s recent launch of “Workplace,” a tool the company says brings the most popular attributes of its consumer network to the workplace. The company touts its ability to help people around the world, who work in different ways, to “stay connected.”

At face value, it may sound plausible. It builds on the success of Facebook’s vast consumer network with tools, features and functionalities that are familiar to millions of employees – and which they would presumably embrace in the enterprise. It also seems to make sense in today’s business environment, which is more globally and geographically dispersed than ever before. So, the concept of staying in touch, sharing ideas and working though problems from the convenience of a smartphone may sound innovative, even business critical.

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11 Resolutions to Make You Stand Out at Work

Doing “fine” won’t get you fired, but it won’t get you promoted either. Find career success by making these little changes in the office.

On your day off, set some time aside to do a Myers Briggs personality test, suggests Hayes Drumwright, CEO of POPin and author of Management vs. Employees. When you get your results, don’t just shrug them off—take some time to analyze what it says about your strengths and weaknesses. “When you have an understanding of what those strengths are, focus on working on the projects and things that show what those strengths are or lean in to what those strengths are,” says Drumwright.

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Why Failure Is Your Friend

I wrote my new book, Management vs. Employees, based on my own experiences as a serial entrepreneur in multiple industries. The book addresses a major problem that has plagued companies for decades: How can leaders bridge the power gap between management and employees in a way that inspires both to engage?

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New products of the week 10.24.16

POPin 3.0 is a complete redesign adding functionality that helps executives drive buy-in among the teams doing the work. New features include in-app dashboards and ‘photo responses’ to survey questions.

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