58% of high-performance employees say they need more quiet work spaces.

Behold the open industrial office space. At one moment, it feels like such a hip environment, bustling with easy communication and collaboration, innovation and headphones just behind every monitor. At another moment, the open office is the loudest, most annoying, distracting and unproductive environment one can imagine.

What if the open industrial office is just part of a larger misguided fantasy? What if this office style is hurting our employees working on the hardest problems—our high-performance employees (HPEs)? What if the open office is causing retention problems, and affecting the quality of our end products?

As I outlined in my HPE article, executives and high-performance employees tend to optimize against completely different trade and life principles—they generally have very different views of the world. This disconnect shows itself very clearly in the environmental conditions of our creative and technical offices.

My latest anonymous survey* shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too distracting.”

(*With over 1,000 respondents from industries like Software, IT, Hardware, Financial Services, Creative, Marketing, Automotive, Architecture and Manufacturing.)

How To Build Your Brand On Instagram: 8 Steps To Double Your Following

With more than 600 million users a month, the once little and lowly Instagram platform has become a powerful networking engine. Particularly as visual media of every variety gains steam, Instagram gives entrepreneurs the power to grow and promote their brands more effectively than ever before.

But how? This week I turned to Lisa Illman, @lisa_illman, the business development pro I last spoke to in October, 2015 to discuss the eight steps she developed for Instagram that doubled her own following and attracted new customers in 30 days, as follows:

1. Create a Clear Profile.
Your Instagram profile is prime real estate, so be sure to take advantage of all the traffic going by. The three key areas to focus on are your photo, profile description and URL link.

Instagram, of course, is an image-conscious social media site, so be sure your profile photo is a good one. “I personally prefer a photo of a person in social media avatars, unless you are a pet business,” Illman says. “If you are, an adorable kitten or puppy is crowd-pleasing. But if you do use your logo, be sure it matches the logo on your website and other social media platforms. For logos, consistency is key.”

Your profile description tells visitors who you are, what you’re about and most of all, what they can expect to see if they follow you. Keywords are a plus. If you are a motivational speaker, your headline might say something like “I love to inspire, motivate and teach professionals how to conquer their goals and live life to the fullest.”

Be sure the description is managing the expectation of your target audience. If they don’t know what to expect from your posts, the chance of them following you decreases tremendously. For example, the description for a fitness instructor might state, “My posts are so motivating, you can’t help but want to work-out!”