From the category archives:

Assessment

What Motivates: Gold, Glory, or God?

August 23, 2010

Motivation comes in many forms, and knowing what motivates the people you work with can make all the difference from “has done” to “has been.” Pay, or as the HR people like to say, compensation, has turned out not to be the end-all-be-all for motivational purposes. As Dan Pink has ably exposed in his latest [...]

Read the full article

How to Brag (Without Bragging): Blame it on Luck!

July 24, 2010

It’s a common challenge; how do you talk about what you’ve done if you’ve done well without sounding like the jerk down the hall who everyone calls a cleetus maggot? In a world where Cheat Your Way to the Top seems to be a common workplace theme song, being accurate and correctly portraying yourself and your [...]

Read the full article

[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 [...]

Read the full article

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 [...]

Read the full article

References: Be Careful What You Ask (For)

July 1, 2010

The line from former US President Harry Truman, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” came to mind immediately. “Would I do a reference call with my prospective new boss?” my former colleague “Kim” asked. Though Kim had worked for three years at a division of a major US company, her potential [...]

Read the full article

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 [...]

Read the full article

← Previous Entries