Successful Workplace

Everyone enjoys a good movie, play, concert or any public performance and work is simply no different. I recently saw Prince for the second time, knowing that he gives a nonstop, thrilling performance that gets the crowd dancing in their seats. When the curtain comes down, people are left screaming for more and demanding multiple […]

I’ve long maintained that the business world can learn a lot from the arts community.  Here’s another example. Great Big Sea is a band from St. John’s, Newfoundland, that blends traditional Newfoundland folk music with pop/rock.  This year, they’re celebrating their 20th year in the music business.  In that time, they’ve grown from playing the […]

Management is a tough job, done well. There is an enormous difference between an employee and a manager, besides the obvious difference in pay grade and power. An employee is someone who works to provide value to the company and has the company’s interest in mind, first and foremost. A manager has to innovate and […]

Respect. The word gets used a great deal but do people ‘get’ it? It’s not just an Aretha Franklin song or a hot topic issue now because of “donglegate” – I mean, who cares about forking repos? Respect is a must in any company, social situation, or everyday interaction. I haven’t given it much thought […]

The following is a guest post by Lilian Sohn. With Content Marketing being the buzz word in 2013, online marketers are struggling more and more to come up with innovative and impressive ideas to promote their clients’ businesses online. Not only should the content be an original and interesting read to their audience, it should […]

I’m a bit of a comic book geek; I read them, collect them and chase the writer and artists to sign them. Everyone has a vice, that’s one of mine. But it got me thinking about how many lessons from comics could be translated into business life. Technology can be your superpower Look at how […]

There are two metrics of success that most people acknowledge readily: money and power.  The further you are up on the food chain, the more responsibility you naturally have, but also the more a company must trust you with this responsibility. Compensation is supposed to be proportional to your output of work and responsibility. However, […]

With the recent announcements that Yahoo and now Best Buy are not allowing employees to telecommute, it seems some people simply refuse to keep up with technology of work. It looks like top executives are resisting, and not in the noble motion picture kind of way where humans have to fight off evil robots. Humans, […]

In a recent post, Jeanne Roué-Taylor expressed her skepticism for the Yahoo! decision to no longer allow employees to work from home. That was the first day of a breaking story and from the outset, it looked like a poor decision and significant step backward for a Silicon valley stalwart (though a bit of a […]

LinkedIn is running another INfluencer series called “Best Advice I ever received” so here at SuccessfulWorkplace we’re doing the same. Early in my career, when I was a Business Analyst leading software implementation projects, a manager told me: “Start with the end in mind.” What she meant was, think about how you want the system […]

I’ve received two pieces of advice that I follow more than the million suggestions I’ve been given over the years. Graduate School Professor The first comes from a professor I had in graduate school. I had one of those “there is no answer” questions for him and he told me, “Mr. Webb, it is rarely […]

They say one in four graduates will fail to find a job. And now the New York Times claims that even the lowest paid office job requires a graduate degree. This just seems a waste of talent and an ever decreasing spiral that both defeats the whole purpose of pursuing a degree but also its value […]

So, who got one of these through the post then ? As soon as the email dropped into the inbox, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn were awash with people posting their new-found ‘elite’ status. Whether you were in the top 1%, 5% or 10% it was a chance to raise the profile even more by telling […]

22 year olds should design everything. I am just 22 years old and I’ve decided that’s the first line on my resume. I turned 22 just a few days ago and it was an opportunity to reflect. I decided we live in an oligarchic society ruled by just a few men with receding hairlines. This is […]

Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg paid a remarkable compliment recently to Netflix for its public sharing of Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility. In GQ magazine, Sandberg went so far as to say that their PowerPoint, “…may well be the most important document ever to come out of the valley.” Those are enormous words from an important voice, […]

Following on from the LinkedIn INfluencer posts today I thought it would be interesting for the authors of Successful Workplace to share exactly the same, after all it’s not exclusive. So here goes; The nature of what I do, between consulting, advising and writing, means I can basically throw a hat and where it lands […]