pop trends impacting 2015 organisational behaviour pop trends impacting 2015 organisational behaviour pop trends impacting 2015 organisational behaviour

the selfie

2014 saw 3,366,329 retweets of Ellen’s selfie and 92 million mentions of “selfie” on twitter. We are officially obsessed with our own image. Organisations are getting “Internal Facebooks” & “Personal Profiling” has become a standard skill.

How will you keep group bonds in an organisation composed of increasingly individual people?

saturated reality

Grand Hotel Budapest, and most of the top ten films of 2014 invited us to a world brighter than our own. Movies have always been an escape – the place they took us to last year was like a photo-shopped version of our life. We upped the saturation, whited out unnecessary details.

Saw what we want to see.

Should we make our workspaces feel this way? Are the ugly little details at risk of getting done?

nostalgia

Taylor Swift told us we should shake, shake, shake our way back to 1989 when things were simpler – to a time without the social media that made her so popular in 2014. Things are rough now, and we miss the time when there were less uncertainties and more silly music.

How can you help employees to feel both secure and relevant?

building icons

The most notable architecture of 2014 has been freestanding objets d’art. With little relation to their environment and a focus on creating a singular remarkable idea – they asked us if we too should have a singular good idea as well.

What is your organisation’s big idea?

What is the one thing you will be famous for?

The Jawbone UP3, FitBit and the Apple Watch let people track their every movement. How many steps did you walk? How many restless nights did you have?.

Tracking personal performance has became easier, gamified, independent and sharable.

How will you handle performance appraisals and annual reviews now?

performance stats

time in art

Walker’s sculpture in the old Domino Sugar refinery honoured black workers and asked us questions of race, economics and identity. Made of sugar, the piece melted down like an idea slipping away, leaving us only with memories.

What conversation needs to happen in your organisation to span paradoxes and make memories stick?

living in dystopia

2014 found more people in imaginary worlds than ever before. People liked living in Mindcraft, being a Maze Runner or escaping the Hunger Games – it allowed us to leave our unpleasant, boring reality to be in alternate worlds.

Should you gamify your tedious work? Create a dystopian office? Bring people back to reality? Or embrace multiple realities?

Architectural projects have been full of natural wood in 2014.

Feng Shui says raw wood is the symbol of potential. Rough cut wood apparently is ideal for stimulating peoples ideas, making us feel at home and creating concepts for the future.

Do your people need a wood place in their workspace?

woody places

awesome ideas

The Lego Movie and it it’s theme song “Everything Is Awesome When You Work In A Team” asked the children of 2014 to think about the relationship between idea-makers and Mr. Business.

How will you set free your idea-people while ensuring the organisation can use their creativity?

easy media

Except for some self-help books, the majority of 2014’s top selling books were versions of popular films. Apparently we want easy media.

How are you making your messages competitive, fast and easy to absorb?

guilt free

We need to be green and we want others to know we are green. Being guilty of not being green was not an option in 2014. Instead, people chose to drive a Tesla, use a Reusable Market Bag or buy well-labelled recycled products.

Public CSR is OK.

What green act can your team do?

get on with it

The “Happy” video phenomena launched by Pharrell Williams captured people’s desire to tell the world that they still can be happy despite the economic indicators.

The tune was the most downloaded song in 2014, and everyone who was in a Happy Video shared it with a friend.

How will you tap your team’s enthusiasm, joy & willingness?

which question stimulates an aspiration for 2015?