Tag: culture

Fake News or Pure BS? Why You Should Be Skeptical of Generation-Bashing Surveys

WHY ARE SO MANY people today so into generation bashing? For years, I’ve heard people gripe about the shortcomings of the Millennial generation, as if Gen X and the Baby Boomers (of which I am one) are somehow perfect and didn’t have their own challenges. I’ve written this before, but I’m sick and tired of

Continue reading

Kicking Him When He’s Down: The Complicated Legacy of Hugh Hefner

NO MATTER HOW you felt about him, the death of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who died last week at his famous mansion in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, was one of those passings that got a lot of people worked up. Since Hefner passed away at the ripe old age of 91, a

Continue reading

Millennials May be Job Hoppers, But There’s a Really Good Reason For That

IT SHOULDN’T COME as any great surprise, but according to Gallup, Millennials aren’t particularly engaged in their jobs. As Gallup’s How Millennials Want to Work and Live report points out, a whopping “71 percent of employees in the Millennial generation (people born between 1980 and 1996) are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work.” Are Millennials really big job

Continue reading

Why Life and Work Is So Very Different in the Aloha State

IT’S BEEN NEARLY 20 years since I’ve been in Hawaii, but the moment I arrived back in Honolulu last January, it felt like I had never left. My connection with the Aloha State goes back a long way. Not only did my wife and I honeymoon on Waikiki, but we lived on Oahu for three years in

Continue reading

I Have a Big F***ing Problem With People Who Swear at Work

LAST SEPTEMBER, Fast Company published a story that intrigued me just as it should intrigue anyone who has navigated the day-to-day rants and mutterings of co-workers on the job. The title said it all: Do You Have a F*cking Problem With Swearing at Work? The article was filled with a boatload of statistics about how

Continue reading

Don’t Forget That Clueless Management Never Goes Out of Style

IT’S LATE SUMMER, everybody out here in the People’s Republic of California seem to be on vacation, and Labor Day is still a couple of weeks away. So, it’s time for some old school clueless management from the good people over at Tronc. Don’t know what “Tronc” is? I’d be surprised if you did, but

Continue reading

It’s Not Easy, But Here’s How to Deal With Passive-Aggressive Behavior

ALTHOUGH IT PAINS ME to say this I’m somewhat of an expert on passive-aggressive behavior. The good people at Wikipedia describe passive-aggressive behavior as follows: The indirect expression of hostility, such as through procrastination, stubbornness, sullen behavior, or deliberate or repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible. That’s a pretty

Continue reading

You Are What Your Culture Says You Are, Like It or Not

WHY DO SO MANY people think that companies only focus on building strong, positive workplace cultures? The fact is, organizations are ALWAYS building their culture — whether they mean to or not. You know what I’m talking about: Those kinds of businesses where workers spend more time yakking about all the bad management and terrible decision making going on

Continue reading

It’s High Time to Give Up the Ghost on Employee Engagement

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.

Continue reading

Nobody Gets a Great Idea When They’re Being Chased by a Lion

I SUBSCRIBE TO THE OLD ADAGE that there’s nothing new under the sun. But once in awhile even I get gobsmacked (as the British like to say) by a new insight that’s so thoughtful and incisive that it makes up for all the crap that normally passes for management wisdom these days. The insight that grabbed me comes from

Continue reading