Read this book if your future is anyway connected to Web2.0. Andrew Keen’s central thesis is that if all content (e.g. music, video, news, books, encyclopaedias) is produced by “amateurs” and no-one will pay for “professional” versions then its curtains for quality or independent publishing.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

An essay by Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian shows why it is important to have good friendship rings as well as strong social/business networks and how to tell the difference.

I spotted two seemingly trivial comments in the UK Daily Telegraph which when put together indicate the difficulties organizational teams face these days. Staff resent dead wood colleagues reports the results of a YouGov poll of 2,500 employees that 8 out of 10 staff are unhappy about “dead wood” colleagues in their organisations who do not pull their weight but yet nothing is done about them. One CV in four is a work of fiction reports that according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development one in four jobseekers tell, not just one but, three lies on their CVs.

UK Small companies more open to virtual working practices than big ones

According to Online Recruitment, “Big businesses are left behind as smaller firms pioneer the remote office”, May 31.

A survey of attitudes to teleworking in UK business, carried out by Mitel, finds somewhat surprisingly that small businesses (72%) are much more open to remote and flexible working practices than their larger counterparts (44%).

One might think that the larger companies more advanced IT and communications infrastructures might make them more amenable to teleworking?

However perhaps mindset may be more important than technology with the bigger companies preference for ‘command and control’ and “if you can’t see it you can manage it” holding them back in new working practices compared with a more ‘self-managed team’ approach popular with small entrepreneurial companies.