Like many of you, I’ve had some great bosses over the years, and I’ve learned a lot from them.
Like many of you, I’ve had some great bosses over the years, and I’ve learned a lot from them.
The United States is, at present, experiencing record or near-record (depending on whose numbers you believe) low unemployment, making it hard for employers to fill jobs. One of our country’s largest generations, the Baby Boomers, have already begun to retire and will continue to do so in droves over the next few years, further reducing …
Take a look at your company’s employee handbook, expense policies, and other procedural documentation. Why does all that exist? Probably not just to make employees miserable, I imagine, or to complicate the workday. “To cover their ass,” you might think – which is an outcome, but not a reason. But understanding your company and your career, and navigating both, …
Here’s a proposition for you to consider: 99% of all human social problems are the result of two or more groups of people holding different opinions, with each group lending no credence whatsoever to the others’. This happens almost constantly in life, and – unsurprisingly but almost always unrecognized – almost constantly in business.
As most of you know, I write lot. I enjoy it. I started out writing 800-page books; when I was offered by first 800-word monthly magazine column, a wise editor told me, “this’ll make you a better writer.” That’s because, when you only have 800 words, you choose every one with care. An unfortunate side …
There’s a fundamental element of business that I think a lot of people don’t fully understand – or even realize exists. Yet it’s such a driver of how business works that to not understand it is to not understand business itself, and to open the door for great frustration.
Grab a copy of your company’s employee handbook. Chances are, it’s more than a couple of pages long. If you’re at a large company, it’s probably huge, and filled with rules – including complex time-off provisions, dress codes, policies, and more. You might, in fact, find some of it to be pretty ridiculous. But every …
My friend Lee used to work for a company that did Sales training. Sales is, at its very essence, about persuading people to buy something. Even if they need that something, you have to persuade them to buy yours, rather than someone else’s. And one of the big maxims Lee’s company would teach is that logic is not persuasive. …
There’s an enormous problem inside some organizations where, whether this is just perceived or actually true, the InfoSec team “maintains” security by “just saying no to everything.” Obviously, no business can survive if one component of itself is simply shutting down all initiatives willy-nilly. “No” isn’t a security position; it’s a death knell. And, if …
Ever invest money? Like, even a 401(k) or something? What’s the first piece of advice you’re usually given by investment people? Diversify. The idea in finance is that, if one part of your portfolio sucks at the moment, you kind of want it balanced with something that doesn’t suck. So you invest a bit in …
