At one of the restaurants I managed, we had issues with high amounts of food waste. Every night, we seemed to throw out quite a bit of food at the end of the shift, and also during the day when...
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The Pissing Contest and Other Time Wasters
I've enjoyed working with a few bosses who bring up the term "pissing contest" when people fight over silly things at work. Workplace crisis can develop when too many "pissing contests" take place and when trust is at a low....
Career Choices and Colleges – Part 1 – by Kellie Rowan
It seems like I can't turn on my television anymore without being bombarded by facts about our how terrible our economy is doing and how much worse unemployment got that day. As a college student, this is pretty scary. When...
Murder She Wrote and HR
Few people know I am fueled creatively by my intense hatred for Angela Lansbury due to her portrayal of Jessica Fletcher in "Murder She Wrote". Lansbury and the writers of Murder She Wrote fooled my grandmother and many other unsuspecting...
Enforcing Rules Like “The No Stopping Law”
I was making my horrific holiday commute from exit 1 to 7 in Danbury, CT yesterday to visit my family for the holiday weekend. Making sure I finished up with my last client before 4pm so I could avoid the...
Managing Your Time and Resources as a Consultant or Solopreneur
I attended a very engaging breakfast this morning as a member of The Consulting Alliance. Leading the discussion today was Bill Polk, whose topic for the day was "Is This Still Where We Want to Be Going?" In today's session,...
Dis-appoint those who disappoint you
We may face disappointment at work with those who work with us or for us. It's important to separate the disappointment from the person themselves, but sometimes it's just as important to remember what an old friend told me once...
Predictability In the Workplace (or “I ate a pizza, now I’m gonna call her.”
My old roommate used to come home from work, eat a pizza, and then call our friend down the hall. It was such a routine that one day I just pretended I was a voice in his head and said...
External motivators destroy internal motivators
One of my most vivid memories from graduate school was when Dr. Tesch told our HR class emphatically that "External motivators destroy internal motivators." We heard this several times throughout the semester, and it resonates with me to this day....