Economists have struggled over the last decade to attribute and explain the dramatic slowing of U.S. productivity growth. Since 2005, U.S. labor productivity growth (growth of measured output minus the…
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Stupid Manager Tricks
For better than two decades, late night talk show host, David Letterman ran hilarious periodic segments, Stupid Pet Tricks, highlighting silly tricks that people had taught their pets to perform. In…
Three Things that will Improve Employee Engagement
Recently I read a piece in the e-version of a major business publication which, by title and implication suggested that seventy percent of Americans hate their work. The piece used…
Have You Ever Been Attacked by a Shark?
Guest post by Jonathan Cardwell Mick Fanning has been. Last month while surfing a competition off the Eastern Cape of South Africa, Mick was attacked by a shark. He bravely…
Should We Stop Doing Performance Reviews?
For the past few years there has been a hue and a cry, joined of late by large numbers of HR professionals, suggesting that companies need to stop doing traditional…
Work-Life Balance… Learning to Like and Live With Chocolate Milk
In a presentation last week for a group of healthcare industry managers, I was asked to comment on “work-life balance.” My remarks were prefaced with the admission that I’m fairly…
Reputation Recruits, but Reality Retains
In the last few weeks, US universities have disgorged nearly 2 million new graduates into the job market, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. American companies have been…
Choose a Great Boss. Be a Great Boss
Guest post by Ivan Serrano The best technique for getting ahead at work is choosing a great boss. Not a great job, a great boss. A great boss is one…
Listening… Really Listening
Recently, I came uncomfortably close to dying in a well-equipped, modern, metropolitan hospital emergency room, a building that I had walked into under my own power. The cause of the…
Leaders… You Really Need Truth-Tellers
My last real (corporate) job was an eleven-year run with a very fast moving “550 mph warehouse” as the company’s founder and CEO has been known to put it. Shortly…