“The reality of open-plan offices is quite different to how they were intended to function” - Bruce Daisley

For years we’ve been told how open plan offices were good for reducing silos, creating collaborative cultures, increasing productivity and so on.

Yet, a significant number of those using the spaces haven’t particularly liked them due to the level of noise and interruptions that destroy productivity or how hard it is to have private conversations.

“It isn’t how much time you spend somewhere that makes it memorable: it’s how you spend the time.” - David Brenner

How frustrating is it being contacted by your work during a holiday?

A minority welcome the contact; It strokes their ego as they tell their partner “they can’t do without me.” However, logic like this is simply “fool’s gold.”

“We can change culture if we change behaviour” - Dr. Aubrey Daniels

Recently, my second eldest (Jake) left home to travel to the other side of the world (or in his mother’s words 12,656 kilometres away!!!) to join Menlo College to begin his dream as a student/athlete to play college basketball. Despite not knowing anyone prior to arriving at Menlo, Jakes’s loved the experience from Day 1 and by all reports has fitted in like a hand to a glove. My observation is culture is the single biggest reason why Jake found the transition so smooth.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” - Aristotle

It’s time to be brutally honest with yourself; How good are you in applying new concepts? Regardless as to whether you’ve rated yourself high or low, read further because it seems we’re not very good at all.

“Excellence is not a skill, it's an attitude” – Ralph Marston

Is it worth the effort to drive excellence when it’s so much easier to tolerate mediocrity? Hope I got your attention with this very tongue in cheek question!!!

“We have a culture where we are incredibly self critical, we don’t get comfortable with our success.” – Mark Parker, CEO, Nike

82 percent of respondents to a Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey consider culture to be a potential competitive advantage. Is your workplace culture something you rave to your friends about? If it’s not, then before blaming others, understand whether you are part of the problem or the solution.

“Faking it until you make it is also known as lying. Lying is usually an act reserved for CVs, kids and sociopaths.” — Adam Fletcher

Raise your hand if you’ve ever made things up, said you can do something you’ve never done before or had any idea how to do it whatsoever. If we’re honest then I guess we’re all guilty to some degree.  There’s nothing all that wrong with of faking it until we make it; that is unless we don’t achieve the results we said we would.

“If you believe you can, or you believe you can’t, either way you are right” – Henry Ford

Confidence has such power. When we’re confident we can feel invincible and be simply awesome at whatever we’re doing. However, it’s quite the opposite when we’re lacking confidence and even worse if we don’t believe we can improve our situation. If we find ourselves in this situation then we need to be mindful how limiting beliefs influence our level of success.

"You can't have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic" - Stephen C. Hogan

Nowadays a more with less mantra drives so much of what we do. To keep up we need to constantly work smarter and occasionally even cut corners where we can. While a self-serving approach can seem necessary, it doesn’t always provide the best outcome for those around us.