All Cows Will Please Report to the Barn

Recently, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy gave notice that all AMZN corporate staff were to be back in the barn working in January 2025. (Before anyone sends any inflammatory emails, we’ve used the Cows metaphor for better than 25 years and have gone to great lengths to be clear that we are NOT comparing people to […]

Coffee Badging Was Only a Matter of Time

Who among us is surprised by the latest salvo to be reported in the remote/hybrid work battle – coffee badging? This is the practice of swiping your badge at the office, coming in long enough to have a cup of coffee, and then retreating to your remote office to continue your work… or not. Just […]

RTO Mandates: How to Make Recruiting and Retention Even Harder

Let’s get right to the point. Consider two groups, A and B. Group A: Knowledge workers who want the option to work remotely, or hybrid. Group B: Managers who want them to come back to the office, issuing Return to Office Mandates. In today’s labor market, Group A outweighs Group B by a staggering margin. […]

Workforce 2022: What IS the New Normal?

By Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden In a nation weary but not yet free of Covid there is growing consternation, largely in C-suites, over the perceived need to return to “normal”, to life as it used to be; to herd millions of now remotely domiciled (free-range) knowledge workers back into the corporate coop, be it […]

Deep Yogurt and the Workplace. Where’s it Headed?

6/14/20 • 10:20P • Memphis In his essay, “Let It Die” activist-artist and cook, Tunde Wey poses a COVID-19 era question about the restaurant industry, which he has experience with: “Can you renovate a burning house?” The analogy plays nice on a larger scale, to America, as we stand here five months into a viral […]

Leading from Afar: Get What You Need

memphis • 05.28.20 • 6:22P  In the April, 2020 One World Concert  The Rolling Stones performed their 51 year old hit song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. As long as they’ve been making music together, it seems safe to say that the band might have done this song 10,000 times perhaps, between practice, […]

Coaching From a Distance

With the sudden, COVID-inspired shift to WFH, one topic that has come to the fore is productivity. How do we get it? How can we possibly verify and measure it in light of physical separation? How can we coach people to better outcomes? Fair questions. One emergent point of view is that the manager/leader should […]