From the category archives:

Career Planning

Can Good Guys Finish First?

August 5, 2010

You work hard, try to do the right thing, and frequently put the interests of others ahead of your own. You’re a good guy. But does that mean you’ll be a success? “Nice guys finish last” is an adage we all know, and it suggests that not only do nice people do poorly in the [...]

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[Life Back West] July 2010 – “Risky Business”

July 22, 2010

Life is full of risks, and as a subset, business and the managing of organizations is perhaps even riskier. Managing those risks better is what separates proverbial losers from winners. “Risk taking,” football player Jim McMahon once noted, “is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise it would be sure-thing-taking.” That hot product that sold like wildfire last month [...]

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The Problem with Assholes – and Why They Won’t Go Away

July 6, 2010

Stanford University professor Bob Sutton, whose work I admire, authored the book “The No Assholes Rule.“ Good book, great topic, and some wonderful thoughts about how to work with and / or avoid workplace assholes. Unfortunately the “rule” doesn’t work in most firms. And even while asshole behavior is corrosive and cancerous to the effectiveness of [...]

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The Trouble with Success

June 27, 2010

Given the choice between career success and career failure I’ll likely take success. Heck I’m like anyone else; who do you know who hates succeding? The trouble with success – one of many – is that most of your learning comes from the bumps of failure, not the sweetness of accomplishment. The biggest derailer in [...]

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[Life Back West] June 2010: “Never Can Say Goodbye”

June 24, 2010

My 96-year old mother died last week after a 12-month bout with dementia, and a much briefer tussle with pneumonia. While I had been fortunate to spend good time with her in Portland earlier this year while she mostly remembered who I was, I missed her passing by an hour Thursday. The flight that I [...]

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How to Juggle Multiple Job Offers: “Jessica’s Dilemma”

June 19, 2010

The current job market is generally a seller’s market: qualified applicants significantly outnumber available openings. Unlike the early part of the decade – a buyer’s market – it means that employers can be (and usually are) very selective in whom they hire, and buyers – job applicants – don’t have the ability to be very highly [...]

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