Leaders Show Up
Two days before New Year’s day, I walked into a Kroger grocery about five miles from my home to pick up a few items. I should have known better. The parking lot was quite busy, and the store was packed with frenetic shoppers playing a nonstop game of chicken with one another using shopping carts, and […]
It’s the Holiday Season, So Celebrate…Productively
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Know how I can tell? Because no one in the corporate world wants to talk about, think about, or do much of anything until “after the first of the year.” But I’m also reminded of the following reference from “A Christmas Carol”, by Charles Dickens: “You’ll want […]
A Few Words on Workplace Feedback for Millennials
Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of providing professional coaching for a diverse group of a dozen or so Millennial professionals, managers, and executives in the workspace. Though it is a disparate group other than the age cohort, we’ve individually uncovered and worked on a fairly short list of remarkably common performance […]
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Popular vote totals suggest that less than half of us got what we wanted by way of the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. Indeed, many had been, as Tom Brokaw said just prior to the election, “curled up in the fetal position saying, ‘get it over with’”, while hoping and praying to avoid getting […]
Why No One Wants to “Join” Your Organization
A venerable old institution in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida has just announced that after 48 years, it’s shutting its doors for good. The University Club, a traditional (and I do mean traditional) private city club, or what’s sometimes called a fine dining or business club (think heavy oak carpentry, dry martinis, and waiters in […]
Workforce Issues & Opportunities in the Hotel Industry – 2017
As a road warrior for my entire professional life, I’ve logged some serious time in hotels. I sent the folks at Marriott a friendly tweet recently… “@Marriott – We hit a milestone this week, sleeping together for the 750th time. Don’t worry, my wife knows. Seriously, keep up the great work!” My business partner, Richard Hadden […]
Carrots, Sticks, and Unintended Consequences
Having seen example after example of the “power of the carrot” I have long maintained that organizations large and small should be careful, very careful what they incentivize people to do, because it will absolutely, positively drive behavior… in every one of us. We’ve seen it on a super-sized scale in the healthcare fee-for-service model, where providers […]
Whether Your Management Style is Trending “Hard” or “Soft”, Some Iron Laws Are Immutable
Spurred by incessant jousting over whether one of the U.S. presidential candidates might be “hardening or softening” their position on immigration policy, I thought recently about an altogether different arena, the workspace, and the evolution of management style that many of us find ourselves in the midst of, as we journey between a top-down command […]
Bad Bosses are Bad Business
Who among us would keep seeing a dentist who was lousy at administering anesthesia? Or would knowingly board an airplane piloted by someone who’d never really learned to fly? I think I know the answer. So why, then, do so many of us tolerate people in management positions who have demonstrated a remarkable ineptitude for […]
5 Ways Employee Recruiting is Like Playing Pokémon Go
Let’s start with this: I am not, like some members of my generation, a Pokémon Go hater. In fact, I’ve played it. And I think it’s kinda cool. There are many things worse than moving off the couch, breathing some fresh air, and discovering places in your community you didn’t know existed. A library in […]