Archive for the 'Workplace' Category

I don’t want to add to your boredom by writing on how to make your own meetings more interesting. I want to help you change your approach and mindset to meetings you attend so you are noisy when necessary to advocate your position and develop visibility so when you speak people know it’s because you…    Continue reading

Some bosses are harder to stay engaged with than others. You or your boss might  work from home, an office across town, or a client location across the world. I’ve heard countless stories from very determined boss-managers who’ve had to stalk their bosses from remote locations, calling every fifteen minutes until the boss finally answers….    Continue reading

If you’re in a heated discussion and hear yourself using the words “I” or “me” more than a few times, you probably own the problem without even intending to do so. Below is a conversation that shows how easy it is to fall into the trap of owning a problem that could be shared were…    Continue reading

How loyal are you to your employer? Would you be willing to cut pay, benefits, or hours to help keep your company afloat? Do you feel as if you and your company are “in this together”? If you said “No way!” to the above questions, you’re not alone. A new study by research giant Ipsos…    Continue reading

Disabled workers are known to fly under the radar of unemployment statistics and recruiters. But in a fast-growing job market, companies may be eager to explore new ways to tap their talents. There’s no issue on the supply-side. New studies show that disability payments are increasing at “an accelerating pace,” with a 51 percent rise…    Continue reading

Everyone knows a bully. It’s the schoolyard tyrant who swoops in on a target, pushing him around while spewing threats and belittling him in front of others. But childhood isn’t where it stops – it’s also on display in the workplace.”Workplace bullying” is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of a person through verbal abuse, behavior that’s threatening,…    Continue reading

Most professionals find their day fractured by interruptions. What you need is a bulletproof chunk of your workday. You need a Quick 10. Shave off ten minutes — say, from 11:00 a.m. to 11:10 a.m. — with no interruptions allowed. Period. No phone calls. No visitors. No e-mails. Establish this pattern over the course of…    Continue reading

One evening in May 2006, the president of the China division of a $10-billion-a-year multinational locked himself out of his office. Using his handheld, he fired off a nasty e-mail to his secretary, ordering her to start checking with her superiors every night before she went home. He also CCed others in the company before…    Continue reading

This hasn’t been a good year for jerks in the workplace. Apart from the usual controversies about egomaniacal politicians, baseball managers and CEOs, a popular new book recommends zero tolerance for assholes and a research report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Management School underscores the toxic organizational impact of emotions in the workplace. Experts who…    Continue reading

Somewhere between bankruptcy and profitability the airlines lost their way. And somewhere between the tarmac at JFK and the friendly skies, the thought strikes me that the time for sympathy has long since passed. In response to heavy losses earlier this decade, management sought to balance the books by reducing quality and costs. They cut…    Continue reading

Have you heard? Crackberry is now a word. Webster’s Dictionary defines the noun as “a person who uses a Blackberry addictively or obsessively or the device when used this way.” Webster’s doesn’t just add words to the dictionary in a wanton manner. A new study by Robert Half Management Resources finds that 69 percent of…    Continue reading

This has been a rough year for lousy bosses. First we were empowered by Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule, then we were amused by Stanley Bing’s Crazy Bosses, and now there’s a website called eBossWatch that allows us to call out the bastards. What do these works have in common? Call it bad…    Continue reading

Would you rather work for a founder or a professional manager?  Yahooligans will find out in the wake of CEO Terry Semel’s demotion this week. Co-founder Jerry Yang is returning to shepherd the company. Yang is a sharp and savvy tech veteran who understands Yahoo!’s culture from inside out. Just as with Michael Dell, who…    Continue reading

Back in the late 90s, in the peak of the dot-com craze, Silicon Valley companies dreamed up imaginative ways to better attract, ‘engage’ and thus retain young tech workers who might otherwise bolt for the competitor’s promise of IPO riches. Perks such as onsite haircuts, gym memberships, laundry services, and sushi chefs were de rigueur….    Continue reading