Sweet Reason with a dose of Common Sense
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
DESPITE THE FOCUS on improving how we recruit and hire new employees, we also know that we should spend as much, if not more, time on how we can better retain the people who are already on our staff. That’s a great thought, but there’s something to consider: No matter how good a job we do
HERE’S THE ONE BIG THING I learned from LinkedIn’s latest list of their most popular (they call it most viewed) job posts: When it comes to job seekers, it’s all about the brand. You should remember this when you hear somebody pooh-pooh’s the notion that a company’s brand really isn’t all that important to job
WHEN I’M ASKED what my biggest accomplishment is, I always point to my first job as a senior executive responsible for an entire department that had been tagged by corporate as being terribly underperforming — so underperforming, in fact, that they were considered one of the very worst units in the entire company. I was
I’VE HIRED A LOT of people over the years, more than I can count, but the one constant in all that hiring is a simple question: Are we taking too long to hire? Yes, I’ve been accused of that before, especially when I was recruiting journalists for a newspaper in Hawaii, a place that people suddenly
AREN”T WE ALL SICK and tired of employee engagement? I know I am. I’ve been writing about it for years (here’s one from July 2010), and the story never changes. A great many consultants and companies have gotten involved in helping organizations get more engaged employees, and a great deal of time and money has been spent.
I’VE SAID THIS BEFORE, but it bears repeating: Good management — smart, savvy, people-focused management — is at a premium and getting harder and harder to find. And if you think I’m wrong about that, here’s the latest evidence to prove my point. Two of the bibles of the business world — The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine magazine — recently
