Trouble at the Office – Reviewing the Special BusinessWeek Issue

The Aug 25/Sept 1st issue of BusinessWeek is all about Office Life. I was checking out the magazines at my local bookstore only to see Dwight Schrute’s face staring back at me from the cover of this issue. Now that I’ve had a chance to read it from cover to cover, I wanted to share some of the highlights from this issue.

For this issue (and for the first time) BusinessWeek collaborated with its readers using surveys, polls and responses on LinkedIn. Nearly 4,000 readers identified their top concerns at work, and the issue seeks to address them. The report also contains advice from leaders like Jim Collins, Anne Mulcahy and Michael Bloomberg.

One of my favorite pieces in the issue is from Jim Collins, the author of “Good to Great”. He translates some of his ideas from the book to today’s workplace including the “first who” concept, and dealing with technology. He makes a great point about how “technology helps, not hurts, as long as you have the discipline to turn these things off. You don’t report to your Blackberry.” He also discusses dealing with bureaucracy and generational differences.

“What’s Eating Gen X” provides a look at why this generation is unhappy at work. It provides responses from readers from an earlier piece by Tammy Ericsson that I wrote about a few weeks ago. There are comments in this article that made me laugh out loud. This article is followed by “A Boomers Guide to Communicating with Gen X and Gen Y”, which is a handy chart of the differences between the two generations in areas such as collaboration, workplace gossip and work ethic. Some wonderful, easy-to-digest information for HR professionals dealing with managing the differences between the generations.

On the lighter side, there’s a fun column from Rainn Wilson (who plays Dwight on The Office) on “Office Jobs from Hell.” I particularly enjoyed his email management tips.

Happy reading. I’d love to hear comments on your thoughts on this Business@Work issue!