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 certain I no longer know what “work-life balance” means. At one time, the term implied that there is a point of demarcation where one’s work […]
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 who listens to employees, who is willing to let employees make mistakes and learn from them, who understands the value of loyalty, who is willing […]
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 near death experience was preventable. It had nothing to do with staffing shortages, Obamacare, or a packed emergency department. Rather, it had a lot to […]
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 after I accepted the job offer but before the start date, my new boss, a blunt talking former FBI agent summoned me for a little extra […]
Some New Year’s Coaching for You
Another new year has begun (2016), and many of us are now in the process of embracing it, with hopeful ambitions to tidy up our bodies, our lives, habits, homes, you name it. Clearly, we do so with varying degrees of enthusiasm and Commitment (capital ‘C’ intentional), but to be sure, no one enters 2015 […]
Ebola and a Lesson on Leadership
Since passage of reform legislation in March 2010, the U.S. healthcare industry has struggled with wrenching change brought on by movement of the tectonic plates underneath the delivery and payment sides of the industry. With the introduction of competition from new sources (e.g., diagnostics and urgent care via Doc In a Box), and the early […]
Show Some Appreciation to Hotel Housekeepers
https://contentedcows.com/blog/item/63-show-some-appreciation-to-hotel-housekeepers Marriott International announced today that it has partnered with A Woman’s Nation, a Maria Shriver venture, in implementing a housekeeper gratuity initiative, “The Envelope Please”, in more than 160,000 North American hotel rooms. The plan is that clearly marked gratuity envelopes will be left each day in guest rooms as a reminder that someone who […]
Getting Beyond the Rehearsed Blather in Recruiting
Last week I had a short, informal coaching conversation with an experienced, level 2 retail manager. Soon to be involved with staffing a new store, he was concerned about the recruiting process, and the fact that many candidates today show up with their promotional blather fairly well rehearsed, and a modicum of experience with behaviorally-anchored […]
Metrics and Managing – Be Careful What and How You Measure
One of the time honored, oft repeated (sometimes mindlessly) management mantras is, “What gets measured gets done.” It seems harmless enough on the surface, right? After all, if you visibly go to the trouble of measuring or inspecting a particular method or outcome, the very act of doing so suggests to onlookers that it’s important […]
What Are YOU Expecting?
Before the World Cup soccer games even start, U.S. men’s head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann has apparently relegated his team to loser status, in what has been termed a “brutally honest and realistic assessment of their chances.” According to Coach Klinsmann, “We cannot win the World Cup because we are not at that level yet.” Really? Really?! […]