arc news

This Month: 3 Reasons Why Every Department Needs Its Own Strategy, New Devices Could Measure Blood Pressure, Burnout, How AI Trained to Read Scientific Papers Could Predict Future Discoveries & More

In this February edition of ARC Reads we continue to share the latest tech and business articles that have piqued our interest.

What We’re Reading This Month

3 Reasons Why Every Department Needs Its Own Strategy –  Many leaders would argue that there should be only one strategy for a company, and that strategy provides all the guidance and direction necessary for departments to create implementation plans. However, most high-level strategies have hundreds of ways they can be translated into action. In this article, the author outlines three reasons why individual departments should create supporting strategies to develop their own vision for success.

New devices could change the way we measure blood pressure – If just by looking at our watch or cell phone we can know, in real time, our heart rate, the number of steps we take, the calories we burn and the hours of sleep we got the night before, why can’t we also know our blood pressure?

Your Burnout Is Trying to Tell You Something – Research has established that burnout is primarily the result of psychologically hazardous factors that occur at your workplace. Not being given the resources or time you need to manage your workload, for example, or working in an environment where you have insufficient control and autonomy, are known burnout triggers. No two experiences of burnout are exactly alike, and recovery requires that you pinpoint the unique workplace conditions that are contributing to your stress. One way to do this is to use your self-awareness skills to tune in and discover what your experience of burnout is trying to tell you — indeed, what it’s been trying to tell you all along. Here are some of the vital and lesser-known messages that burnout can reveal, and what to do about them. Article here.

How an AI trained to read scientific papers could predict future discoveries – “Can machines think?”, asked the famous mathematician, code breaker and computer scientist Alan Turing almost 70 years ago. Today, some experts have no doubt that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon be able to develop the kind of general intelligence that humans have. But others argue that machines will never measure up. Although AI can already outperform humans on certain tasks – just like calculators – they can’t be taught human creativity. More here.

How do I give negative feedback? – File this one under necessary but uncomfortable workplace conversations. It doesn’t matter if you are a new manager or have been a boss for decades, giving negative feedback feels icky. But something a guest on the New Way We Work told me a few years ago has stuck with me: Feedback is a gift. Reframing it that way has made it easier for me to both receive and give feedback. After all, if someone doesn’t care about you they wouldn’t bother to give you feedback. Read more.