Good News

It was a dark and stormy night... Actually that's not true: it was a beautiful sunny morning but I've always wanted to start a post like that! The phone rang and although I didn't recognize it I answered anyway as it was a local call and I hoped I hadn't fallen into the trap of …

Punt

So it goes. My friend Mick and I were talking the other day. I'd love to tell you we were enjoying a strong bevvy watching the afternoon unwind but we were both still working. I'd called him a few days earlier for advice on a project I was looking at: he's pretty straight forward and …

Engagement Wins

Let's talk about engagement. No, not the connection of employee to work that so many speak of, let's take it down a level, or up, depending on how you look at that. Let's talk people to people. I just left my favorite grocery store - Central Market on N. Lamar in Austin - where engagement …

One Degree

Performance counts. One of the most common challenges in the workplace is performance management. The very phrase turns many of us off, and then we become confused between appraisal, evaluation and management. Its a headache and who needs a headache. We dismiss it. While I could attempt a long treatise on the process of performance …

Contempt

They say familiarity breeds contempt. I'm not sure I'd go that far but it does in my experience lead to undervaluing what you have. In career and culture its easy over time to let familiarity dull our senses. Any excessive knowledge of something lets our mind put it in a box attaching certain meaning to …

Fit Test

I just don't see the fit. If you've been in recruiting for any length of time you've heard this maddening phrase. Under the guise of protecting the "culture" managers often use gobbledy-gook like this to say "I don't like someone" in a politically correct way. Yet there is a time to think of your own …

One Step

Slow down.The best employee relations advice I ever received was from Max Schellman early in my career. I don't know where good old Max is anymore, but I still take his counsel to heart and share it today with you: better to be one step too slow than one step too fast.In the US employee …

Service

Who do you serve?Not long ago I worked with a client - I'm always vague so as not to breach confidentiality - and I was immeresed in old school HR I thought we'd left behind.Now, before I use this group as a good example of a bad example, let me remind the gentle reader I …

Best Blogs 19 September 2014

Welcome to #BestBlogs, the weekly curation of the world of work. The latest ideas on organization life, personal collaboration and the politics of work from practitioners around the globe are collected here so you may become more effective, perhaps even more satisfied, in career. Every week our theme emerges organically and this week its about …

Best Blogs 5 September 2014

Welcome to #BestBlogs, the weekly curation of the world of work. The latest ideas on organization life, personal collaboration and the politics of work from practitioners around the globe are collected here so you may become more effective, perhaps even more satisfied, in career. Every week our theme emerges organically and this week its all …