Last week I wrote about Pret A Manger which rewards employees on behaviors such as niceness and teamwork, not just traditional measures of performance. Pret believes incenting these behaviors improves the health of the organization which leads to more sustainable performance. A 2011 research study from Tel Aviv University backs them up and suggests having nice co-workers even improves employee health.
The researchers closely monitored 800 adults over twenty years, repeatedly interviewing them on a wide range of topics from the conditions in their workplace, the behavior of their bosses, and the niceness of their colleagues. Perhaps not surprisingly, the perceived niceness of co-workers was highly correlated with the risk of death. After all, friendly people help reduce stress and stress is deadly.
Read full blog post here.
I'm fascinated by the concept of aligning execution and strategy; in other words – making sure what we actually do matches what we say we will do. It might sound obvious but finding ways to close the gap between the two makes a great subject for a blog and I’ve been writing about it for years. Even as CMO of SAP, I do my best to literally “manage by walking around” but since SAP is a global company it might be more aptly called manage by flying around. While I occasionally write about marketing topics, most of my entries deal with general people and business issues. Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments. 
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