Sweet Reason with a dose of Common Sense
A LONG TIME AGO, in a workplace far, far away, I ranted about all the dumb meetings I had attended over the years. The original blog post on that has been lost to institutional idiocy at the publication that made it impossible to find again some 15 years after I wrote it, but the gist
FOR ALL THE CLATTER about how well the American economy is doing, there sure do seem to be a lot of layoffs going on. The latest — and some out here in SoCal would say the noisiest — was the recent layoff of more than 20% of the Los Angeles Times newsroom staff. Los Angeles
I’M ALWAYS HUNGRY for good advice no matter where it comes from. And advice from a former boss or mentor is usually the best. That’s why a recent Wall Street Journal article titled ‘The Best Advice a Boss Ever Gave Me‘ grabbed my attention. But it was the subhead that really pulled me in, because
FIRST, AN APOLOGY: I’ve been writing a lot about recruiting and hiring recently. I’m really sorry for that. My intent was NOT to make this a talent management blog, and that’s easy for me since I worked and wrote about it for so damn long at so many places. But, I still see many things
RESEARCH CAN BE GOOD or bad, but when it is good AND useful, it can help guide us to better insights that improve our decision-making moving ahead. Here’s some research from earlier this summer that caught my attention — a survey that shows what new college graduates really want from their would-be employers. It comes
I’M NOT SURE ABOUT the rest of the world, but here in the U.S. there has been an ongoing battle over just what an independent contractor is. It’s become a bigger issue over the last few years because of businesses like ride-sharing giant Uber, a company built on the premise that its drivers are simply
Here’s a basic workplace truth: Good people frequently get fired. Steve Jobs got fired from Apple, eventually returning to build it into the high-flying, trend-setting company that it is today. Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, and Harry Potter author JK Rowling all got fired, too. Listing all the famous people who once were “involuntarily terminated” is
HERE’S SOMETHING I’VE LEARNED from years of managing people: Great leadership wisdom is really hard to find. For all of the many leadership books that have been written — and there are more than 60,000 listed on Amazon — the really great V-8 moments, the “Blinding Flashes of the Obvious” where a truly great leadership
IT’S A TOPIC that only comes around every few years, but it comes down to this: What are your workplace policies for allowing employees to vote? A recent survey uncovered a new wrinkle about this issue that I had never thought about. It’s this: A company’s voting policies can also have a huge impact on the
I’M ALWAYS AMAZED at how so many leaders can get so far without learning one of the very basic tenants of management. It’s this: Good leaders have to give bad news. Patty Azzarello learned this back when she became the youngest general manager in Hewlett-Packard (HP) at the tender age of 33, and she reminded me
