Sweet Reason with a dose of Common Sense
IT ALWAYS SEEMED too good to be true. Back in 2019, I questioned a relatively new employment practice that a lot of companies were pushing at the time — unlimited paid time off, better known as PTO. I didn’t think much of it back then, and the debate hasn’t changed much since I wrote about
Editor’s Note: Here’s one of my most popular holiday classics. This one is from back in December 2018. I’VE HAD TO WORK THROUGH so many holiday seasons that I feel a little like Clark Griswold. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, the character should. It’s the role Chevy Chase played numerous times, but most
Editor’s Note: I’m occasionally republishing some of my most popular posts. Here’s one from back in December 2017. THE HEADLINE ON A STORY in The Wall Street Journal pretty much said it all: Welcome to the Post-Weinstein Holiday Party. What followed was 1,400 depressing words that basically said, without actually saying it, something that you probably already know
YOU FIND ALL SORTS of interesting things when you go through old email. I’ve been doing that recently as I try to get rid of the many messages I’ve saved over the years. Why I saved so many escapes me now, but the silver lining is this — I’m finding some interesting conversations that are
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
Editor’s Note: I’ve been occasionally reposting some popular articles from the past. This one was published back in January 2007. THE HOME DEPOT used to be about people. I was sadly reminded of this during the hullabaloo over the abrupt departure of Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli. The focus of most news coverage was on
I CAN’T TELL YOU how many times I longed for hybrid work. It wasn’t called that back when I first asked my boss about it in 2000, or again in 2007-2008, or even as recently as 2016. It wasn’t called hybrid, or remote, or anything back then, but it didn’t matter because I worked for
HERE’S A PROBLEM that I struggled with when I was a middle manager. It popped up in places I worked from Kentucky to Hawaii, and was detailed recently in a Harvard Business Review story titled When New Hires Get Paid More, Top Performers Resign. First. As the summary in HBR describes it: “To attract new
REWARDING EMPLOYEES can be a tricky business. It’s also hard for many organizations to get right no matter how good their intentions are. The key to it — and this is critically important — is that whatever you give employees to say thank you for their hard work must make them feel like you sincerely
Editor’s Note: I’ve been reposting some of my popular articles from the past. This one was published here back in August 2017. THE OLD ADAGE is true — there’s nothing new under the sun. But once in awhile even I get surprised by a new insight that makes up for the crap that passes for management
