First of all, you certainly can’t say with absolute confidence that some type of cycles is crucial or some types of cycles are less important. They cover different aspects of human nature, human and societal development. They just cover different parts of our life. And in this respect, they can’t be distinguished in terms of which is more important and which is less.

On the other hand, you should always take into account the preferences that people or societies put before them. Some of these preferences may be more short-term goals. For other individuals or countries, or even civilizations there can be much longer-term goals and objectives.

Primary importance

With all this in mind in terms of the importance of the cycles, I would say that the most important cycles are the demographic ones. They put the base for all the other types of cycles because ultimately it is actually the sum of individuals that creates development. Broadly speaking, the more people there are, the more development these individuals can potentially achieve, all other things being equal. These demographic cycles can last for millennia. Sometimes they can shorten to centuries or even decades. In any case, in my opinion, they are the most crucial type of cycles that influence a country’s or a civilization’s development.

I would also say that, after demographic cycles, the most important are the economic cycles. This is also a somewhat contentious idea because economic cycles incorporate many other aspects of human development. In particular, they include technological advancement that influences the economy, finance, trade many other spheres of life.

Secondary importance

I would also argue that the second most important type of cycles is technological cycles and technological revolutions. When they happen they dramatically change the way people produce, consume or distribute goods and services. Furthermore, tech cycles dramatically influence the efficiency of production. All in all, many economists argue that technological development is the backbone of economic development. Without it, it’s only extensive growth that just can’t be sustainable in the long run.

Other cycles

That the rest of the cycles may seem less important because they can be said to influence some short-term development or a limited scale factor. They can be extremely influential and can be extremely important in changing people’s lives in the short term. Nevertheless, if you look at the global strategic picture, they are less prominent in terms of the development of global civilization.

* * *

All in all, I would repeat my point that it is extremely hard to distinguish which type of cycles of development is more important. Especially taking into account that all of them intertwine between themselves. Nevertheless, some classification by the level of their influence on the overall humankind development can be made.

The post Global Cycles: Can They Be Distinguished by Importance? appeared first on Strategy Blog.

If you’re having trouble deciding which tools are most beneficial, here’s a list of must-have remote working technology for increased staff productivity:

Apps for Instant Messaging

It is critical to have continual contact in order to ensure that progress is made. It’s extremely useful to use software like Slack, which was designed for corporate usage. This is to guarantee that communication is not hampered as a result of remote working.

Solution for Video Conferencing

Instant chat apps alone are insufficient. Even while working remotely, meetings remain an important component of regular professional life. For real-time two-way collaboration, use video conferencing systems like Zoom and MS Teams. Employees from all around the world may participate in these events from the comfort of their own homes or wherever they are working.

Time-tracking software

Time is a valuable commodity that, if not managed properly, may quickly deplete. Managers can simply assist employees keep track of their time and limit distractions in an office area surrounded by the entire team. However, it is difficult to keep track of things from home, and managers do not want to constantly remind staff of deadlines. Time management or tracking software, such as Timely, come in helpful in this situation. These applications provide gentle reminders and assist employees in maintaining a good work tempo. Furthermore, technologies such as Google Calendar may be used to establish meeting reminders.

Collaboration Suite for Teams

There is almost never any job done alone in a department. Instead, various team members will examine the same document, with some changing, commenting, and approving it. With tools like word processors, presentation builders, and spreadsheet producers, office productivity suites like Google Workspace and Microsoft’s Office 365 enable for smooth online remote collaboration. As a result, several team members may work on a single document in real time, with auto-save capabilities and version history to undo any mistakes.

Tools for Project Management

Productivity-enhancing project management software like Asana and Bitrix24 assist keep track of job progress and give simultaneous reminders to the entire team for a project involving numerous team members with various duties.

These technologies also aid in assessing the quality of each team member’s work and give transparency in project evaluation.

The post Useful Tools for Remote Work appeared first on Strategy Blog.

Telecommuting blurs the line between business and personal life, making it hard to separate work and relaxation. As a result, many remote employees may find themselves working unusual hours, making it difficult to completely disconnect at the end of the day.

Also. working from home may be a very lonely experience. Working at home, rather than in a typical office setting, eliminates a significant social element of work. Coffee breaks, group lunches, and office jokes, while seemingly harmless, are significant means of connecting and creating connection. Telecommuting has the potential to eliminate this sense of belonging and support network.

However, these aren’t insurmountable obstacles. Remote employees can reap the benefits of flexibility while avoiding negative emotional and professional consequences if they are properly managed. Here are two measures that any company may do to improve the remote work experience.

The first step is to try and keep remote work visible and regulated. Usage of digital tools may help you to manage time and schedule work, which helps to maintain a healthier work/life balance. There are several tools that can help with this, including as planning applications, activity logs, and to-do lists, but automated time trackers are by far the easiest and most comprehensive option.

The second step is mixing office and remote work. Employees that go into the workplace at least one day a week have been proven to be the happiest. This should be promoted wherever feasible (for example, by providing “in-office days”), so that the advantages of on-site and remote work may be combined. Of course, when personnel are dispersed throughout the globe, things get more difficult, but you still have choices. Annual business meetings assist to foster a greater sense of community and provide an opportunity for many colleagues to meet for the first time in person.

The post How to Improve Telecommuting Experience appeared first on Strategy Blog.

The unusually high amount of job quits seen in the past few months is widely called the Great Resignation. Many researchers, analysts, and strategic consultants have been actively discussing the issue. In my recent evaluation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data (https://business-and-money.net/the-great-resignation-what-does-the-data-say/) I tried to look at the numbers behind this Great Resignation talk. To put it briefly, the data shows that the tide of quits is real but is very likely to be short-lived and will subside in the coming several months.

So should you personally join the current quits flow? Should you finally try and look for a better position? Here are some major points to think about before you set sail.

First things first. The standard 4 Ps are to consider. But keep in mind that these apply at any time not just the post-pandemic quits fever.

• Passion. To my experience, the most crucial aspect of any job is whether you enjoy doing it. If your new career opportunity offers a more interesting or challenging set of tasks it may be time to think about pursuing this chance.
• Prospects. The future development outlook is at least as important for any job as its current perks are. The more exciting the vista, the more acceptable quitting your current job should be.
• Pay. Well, it’s pretty straight-forward here: if you have a promising position in the field that you find fascinating with a really nice raise offered – go for it. I mean there certainly are other things to think about – see below – but realistically money is important.
• Position. Almost the same as with the pay. Most times getting a higher post means that you should seriously consider taking it, as it’s generally comes bundled with the previous three Ps.

But all of this is pretty obvious, and I described it just to keep your thinking straight and not lose any aspect of the job change decision. Here are the two points that I think are key today.

Work-life balance. Always take into account the way your new position is going to affect your life. Landing a new job mostly means more work, at least at the start. But other factors are also vital: changing location, new transport route, longer hours, more stress – consider all of these and compare the sum of negative effects to the advantages you new job gives you.

Fitting and adapting. Changing a job always comes with risks attached. Usually, up to 50% of the success on a new job depends on establishing good relations with your new co-workers and your superiors. You may have impressive professional skills, be hardworking and easy-going and still wouldn’t be able to work out the chemistry needed to seamlessly join the new team. So be very careful to evaluate the level of stress come under in a new place and the risk of just not casually making it before you accept some insignificant pay raise.

Overall, going on with the seagoing analogy: don’t look enviously at the boats sailing away – not all of them will reach their destination, so assess your strengths, your possible benefits, and your risks before your join the Great Resignation tide.

The post The Great Resignation Wave Lingers: Should You Join? appeared first on Strategy Blog.

In the previous article, I described my opinion on distant work in general, but now we’ll talk about more important things for everyone. Here are four personal tips for any person who have to (or want to) work from home for a long time.

Firstly, you have to maintain your work-life balance. Sure, it’s a standard tip for any workers, but it’s even more true for remote ones. The reasoning here is quite simple: as you work from the place where you live (and where your personal life is usually concentrated), it’s easy to go all-work, you wouldn’t even really notice. Don’t do that, even if there’s overtime pay on your job – and especially if there’s none. That’ll do in a short term, but you’ll feel the negative results in 3+ months.

Secondly, don’t discard the lunch break. Even if you’re eating in front of a computer (which can be harmful for your health by the way), it’s important to make a pause even if you’re working on an hourly basis. It’s even more important if you constantly have to do overtime work – cook something or go for a walk for 30-60 minutes. Again, all negative possible effects might not appear instantly, but they certainly will, sooner or later.

Thirdly – Do. Not. Get. Distracted. You can’t really do anything with the presence of relatives or other loving ones, but you must build some barriers with them at the working time – otherwise, you’ll be focused on your home, not on work. What’s even more important, you shouldn’t get lost in the Internet surfing or gaming at work. From my personal experience, time drags much longer in those cases, comparing to simple work-brake-work regime. What’s worse – your head is all messed up for some reason and you get tired really fast while doing much less work. This is not even about work discipline, but about your well-being and the clarity of mind.

Fourthly – and lastly – keep company with your colleagues. Work is a social-heavy activity. Even if you feel yourself better without human presence, it’d be good if you’ll chat with your team on non-work matters, or call them to talk. A little bit of socialization certainly wouldn’t harm in those troubled days

Aforementioned tips are just excerpts from my personal experience. I can only hope that it’ll be helpful for you worklife.

The post How to Save Sanity While Working Remotely appeared first on Strategy Blog.

First, how and why did I choose to telecommute or how did it happen? When I was looking for a new job in such a specific industry as consulting, traditionally, you have to go to big cities, financial centers of countries, usually there are offices of such companies. In my case, I had to travel for an interview from 300 km to 950 km, which is quite expensive to go through the first stage of the interview and did not guarantee you a job. The risks of failing an interview and wasting money were pretty high. Suddenly, I saw a vacancy for a remote analyst away 950 km from me. I decided to try because there were no financial risks in this case. Since then I have been working remotely.

What are the advantages of telecommuting?

• Fewer obstacles to enter. As you can see from my example above, the remote passing process in the company has won out of the traditional office in the absence of overhead costs.
• Overcoming distances. You can work from anywhere. During this time, I worked in two different cities.
• Flexible schedule. Usually, such companies have flexible hours and the ability to work part-time, full-time, or a combination of both.
• Time to work. In big cities, in the morning and evening, it always means traffic jams when people go to and back from work, it can take up to 2 hours one way. You have extra hours per day that you can spend however you want.
• Food. You no longer need to spend money on dinners in a cafe (some can refund money), it is also not always possible to eat according to your preferences in the city center. When cooking at home, you can eat healthy food, follow different diets, which is quite difficult in public places. I switched to healthy food and optimized my daily calorie intake, and later move to intermittent fasting 16/8.
• Salary. By saving on costs, you can pay a higher wage than the average for the region, but lower than with the capitals. There is one of the key benefits for the employer.
• International experience. The distances for such companies not a big deal and the boundaries are erased, often possible to work with international clients or partners. The possibility to obtain such experience is higher.

Then what are the disadvantages in this case? The main disadvantages are related to self-motivation, social communication, and organization of one’s time:

• Distraction. At home, there are a lot of things that might distract you from the work process (people, pets, messengers, cozy atmosphere, lack of control).
• Social communication. By working from home, your social network is limited by remote communication. You will feel hungry for real communication that can sink you into depression.
• Self-motivation. In most cases, remote work means performing any tasks or KPIs on your own. Which requires high inner motivation and time management. Draw your schedule: what time to wake up, complete the work plan, lunch, the second work plan, …, dinner, do sport. Over time it does not seems a piece of cake.
• Weak corporate culture. Nobody else brings pizza or cakes to the office after work to share or celebrate an event, no business trips, and joint events.

In the long run, the listed disadvantages become highly significant and you constantly need to deal with them so that productivity does not suffer.

I would like to share my experience of distance working. I have worked remotely in management consulting for over 2 years. Until that time, I also managed to work offline in the office in the same field, so I can compare offline and online work experience in the same industry.

First, how and why did I choose to telecommute or how did it happen? When I was looking for a new job in such a specific industry as consulting, traditionally, you have to go to big cities, financial centers of countries, usually there are offices of such companies. In my case, I had to travel for an interview from 300 km to 950 km, which is quite expensive to go through the first stage of the interview and did not guarantee you a job. The risks of failing an interview and wasting money were pretty high. Suddenly, I saw a vacancy for a remote analyst away 950 km from me. I decided to try because there were no financial risks in this case. Since then I have been working remotely.

What are the advantages of telecommuting?

• Fewer obstacles to enter. As you can see from my example above, the remote passing process in the company has won out of the traditional office in the absence of overhead costs.
• Overcoming distances. You can work from anywhere. During this time, I worked in two different cities.
• Flexible schedule. Usually, such companies have flexible hours and the ability to work part-time, full-time, or a combination of both.
• Time to work. In big cities, in the morning and evening, it always means traffic jams when people go to and back from work, it can take up to 2 hours one way. You have extra hours per day that you can spend however you want.
• Food. You no longer need to spend money on dinners in a cafe (some can refund money), it is also not always possible to eat according to your preferences in the city center. When cooking at home, you can eat healthy food, follow different diets, which is quite difficult in public places. I switched to healthy food and optimized my daily calorie intake, and later move to intermittent fasting 16/8.
• Salary. By saving on costs, you can pay a higher wage than the average for the region, but lower than with the capitals. There is one of the key benefits for the employer.
• International experience. The distances for such companies not a big deal and the boundaries are erased, often possible to work with international clients or partners. The possibility to obtain such experience is higher.

Then what are the disadvantages in this case? The main disadvantages are related to self-motivation, social communication, and organization of one’s time:

• Distraction. At home, there are a lot of things that might distract you from the work process (people, pets, messengers, cozy atmosphere, lack of control).
• Social communication. By working from home, your social network is limited by remote communication. You will feel hungry for real communication that can sink you into depression.
• Self-motivation. In most cases, remote work means performing any tasks or KPIs on your own. Which requires high inner motivation and time management. Draw your schedule: what time to wake up, complete the work plan, lunch, the second work plan, …, dinner, do sport. Over time it does not seems a piece of cake.
• Weak corporate culture. Nobody else brings pizza or cakes to the office after work to share or celebrate an event, no business trips, and joint events.

In the long run, the listed disadvantages become highly significant and you constantly need to deal with them so that productivity does not suffer.

The post My Remote Work Experience appeared first on Strategy Blog.

I worked in two completely different, but similarly viable environments. The first one is Totalent, which is a system with dedicated cloud workspace, pre-installed Linux, Windows and all required software:

• You don’t have to have a powerful PC, all the work is done on remote servers. The delay is basically non-existent, so most of the time the remote part doesn’t really bother.
• In fact, you don’t have to have a PC at all – it’s possible to work even on smart phone if you have Bluetooth mouse+keyboard, and some urgent actions can be done with touch if required. All you need is stable internet connection.
• There’s integrated video call service, so there’s no need to install 3^rd party software for work-related conferences.
• The system counts every minute of working time when you logged in, so your overtimes are instantly captured by the system.

It worked surprisingly well, but there were also some disadvantages, too. Most of them stem from the key advantage of remote systems:

• You must have a good Internet. It’s possible to work with slow Internet speed (picture wouldn’t degrade even by a little bit), but the delay would increase to uncomfortable amounts.
• Sometimes there might be server-side issues that can slow down the work.
• The system can’t play any sounds (aside from call tool). Since you don’t really need sounds in mundane office work, this disadvantage might be considered optional, but it was worth to mention.
• You have to work with web camera. Personally, it didn’t bother after a week or so, but it might be uncomfortable for others.

The other environment I worked in is not really environment in a strict sense of the word – it’s the lack of one:

• All your work is being done on your own PC. There’s also cloud disk for team members
• All communications are done through e-mail and 3^rd party software
• You’re not captured on video or whatsoever

Surprisingly enough, those two approaches can be both viable. The first one basically emulates work in the office, the second one is based on trust and provides freedom, which might be perfect for some people. I liked working in both styles, but the first one really helped with self-organization, which is the must for remote work.

The post Two Approaches to Remote Work appeared first on Strategy Blog.