Sweet Reason with a dose of Common Sense
REMEMBER THE OLD military concept of “shock and awe“? It got a lot of attention during the Iraq War, and is defined as rapidly dominating an opponent “by the initial imposition of overwhelming force and firepower.” But “shock and awe” isn’t just for the military; it’s useful whenever you want to overwhelm someone quickly and
If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a hundred times while listening to managers give performance reviews to their employees – “Here are the areas you need to work to improve on.” It sounds like a really smart thing to do, doesn’t it? After all, don’t we all want to improve on our weaknesses? Well
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
RAISING CHILDREN, and leading people, isn’t easy. In many ways, leadership is similar to raising a child. The goal is to have people who are self-reliant and self-sufficient, but the trick is knowing just how much help to give along the way — and when you might actually be giving too much. Although it seems to
I LOVE IT WHEN a long-time workplace practice suddenly gets re-defined and is referred to by some silly new terminology. Yes, I was excited when I discovered what The New York Times is now calling that time you get off in-between jobs. Although I have a lot of problems with America’s Newspaper of Record – it’s
HERE’S A MANAGEMENT TRUISM you can’t avoid: You learn more from a bad boss than you do from a good one. I was struck by this when I came across an old Corner Office” column in The New York Times. It was a Q&A with Dawn Lepore, the now-former chairwoman and CEO of Drugstore.com, and
HERE’S THE BOTTON LINE on the recent anti-racial bias training at Starbucks, and it was captured perfectly in the headline on The New York Times story about the big event. It said: Starbucks’s Tall Order: Tackle Systemic Racism in 4 Hours Yup, the NYT is right; it’s unlikely that Starbucks, or any other company, is going to make much
If you read a lot of business coverage, you know this to be true: The last thing we need is yet another list touting the “best” companies. As my PR friend Robin Hardman points out, “Each year you see them — shouting from business journals, websites, magazine covers… “Best Companies to Work For” lists are everywhere: there are
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY as I was watching the Rose Bowl, I saw a hard-working woman who was mistreated by a self-centered boss who didn’t appreciate her. So, she quit and left the clueless jerk to go work for herself. Who knew? It’s amazing what can happen in 30 seconds during a big college football
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
The Skeptical Guy 