Successful Workplace

Change has always been one of the most important wheels driving the IT industry. IT product vendors, systems integrators, technology vendors, a plethora of consulting service providers –- all partner with customers to engineer, deliver and enable change in some form or the other. At the same time, even as they facilitate change directly or […]

I have teenage step children and a four month old daughter. In the short 15 years between the birth of the teens and the infant, the world changed incredibly. The Internet arrived and software began eating the world at an even faster rate. This has me concerned about their employment prospects by the time both […]

Email is probably the worst way to accomplish anything that really, really counts. You know the scenario…there’s work to get done or a problem to be solved and rather than anyone having an actual conversation, it ends up being done through email. All too often, email is being used for one or more of the […]

Ken Robinson recently delivered yet another great talk on the state of American education.  He pointed out that countries that take a more organic approach (e.g. Finland) perform much better overall than those who take a mechanistic, standardized approach (e.g.  The United States with “No Child Left Behind”, emphasis on testing). Remarkably, the organic approach, […]

The need to maintain great relationships at work has never been stronger than today. Organizations are flatter, work is more collaborative and the future will bring even more of the same. The further we get from the industrial age workplace structure of our parents, the more important gaining the cooperation of our peers and even […]

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 […]

The 139th Kentucky Derby will be held today at Churchill Downs and a sizable chunk of the world will be watching as this 2-minute long race crowns a champion. So much build up and hype surround this one race…these two short minutes, that it pulls in people who have nothing to do with the sport. The favorite […]

In an article in today’s Washington Post, it was reported that your odds of getting a call back for a job interview are much lower if you’ve been unemployed for 6 months or more. There could be several reasons for this that the article covers, including perceptions that long-term unemployed: Have outdated skills May take […]

How many people do you work with who are constantly telling you how busy they are? Do you feel badly for them or are you more often annoyed to hear their complaints? How often do you doubt their motivation? You probably should. Busyness translated Janet Choi, in Busyness is Not a Virtue translates, “I’m busy” […]

Once again, the pitfalls of using social media rears it’s head and someone pays the price. This time it’s not an internal department falling asleep at the wheel a la Burger King when it was hacked but something a little more worrying. Paris Brown is Britain’s first youth police and crime commissioner, a position she […]

It’s tax time again.  Every year, the government leaves billions on the table because people don’t pay what they should.  The British government is tackling part of this problem with a low cost solution that shows a £2000 return for every £1 spent. I’ll take a 2000:1 return any day. The idea is based around […]

Only one in three employees is highly engaged says Towers Watson in a 2012 study. Not only does that make sense to me, I fear the number may actually be even higher. Too many companies operate with just a few really, really bright and engaged people and a cast of other characters that are along […]

Wow. Web speed. It takes about 24 hours for indignation to be viral and for an incident to come full circle. Donglegate happened with a speed a ferocity that is the real story, not the silliness of what anyone actually said or did. Tweets were tweeted, people were removed from a conference, people blogged, and […]

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 […]

The news world went a little crazy this week covering Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO. In her book Lean In, Sandberg talks about how men still hold the vast majority of leadership and power roles across the globe. When you hear her statistics, it’s hard to dispute where we stand on equality, even in the most […]