From the category archives:
Frequently I receive notice of a workshop or webinar that another consultant will offer. Since I once belonged to a human resources organization, my name appears on virtually every mailing list on the planet. Today I received an invitation to a webinar entitled “Managing Employees from Hell: Discipline That Gets Results.” Where do these companies [...]
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Steve Goodman aspired to write the perfect country / western song, “You Don’t Have to Call Me Darling.” He had a clear strategy, but he initially failed in execution because he didn’t seek the voice of the customer. He sent the song to David Allen Coe, who wrote Goodman back that it was not was [...]
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“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Andersen’s famous account outlines the story of two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that are invisible to those unfit, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” [...]
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Just when I thought people had gotten about as crazy as they could get, I uncovered a new movement afoot to identify and recognize “office spouses,” a term for co-workers who share a close relationships, on Valentine’s Day. People who advocate honoring their office spouses on Valentine’s Day claim that showing people you “care” should [...]
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Amy Chua’s new bestseller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, has stirred quite a controversy. According to Chua, raising successful children involves the strict discipline that she experienced as a child and that she advocates for western mothers. According to her, play dates, sleepovers, television, and sports waste the time of a child. Only academics [...]
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David Baldacci could write an owner’s manual for a 1957 toaster, and it would immediately shoot to the top of the best seller list. The man can spin a yarn. This season’s blockbuster, Hell’s Corner, is not exception. I’m currently on page 294 and can’t wait to finish business for the day so I can [...]
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By now most people have seen the clip of the View during which Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg harrumph off the set in response to Bill O’Reilly’s comments about the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. The scene looked staged and slightly rehearsed, but that’s beside the point. The behavior of the two hosts personifies a [...]
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A silo used to refer to a large feed storage tower. Thousands of them dotted farmland—tall bins rising to the sky keeping safe the precious crops. You wouldn’t want to fall into one because there was no way out, other than the top, and there was no way to communicate through the walls. Sometime in [...]
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On August 5, 1997 a Korean pilot, the recipient of a flight safety award with 8,900 hours of flight time, crashed into the side of Nimitz Hill in Guam, killing 254 people. This was not an isolated event, however. The loss rate for Korean Air in the period between 1988 and 1998 was seventeen times [...]
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This week the news of an Alabama professor shooting others in a meeting dominated the news. Apparently, the professor had been expecting an announcement of her tenure (Seriously? She came to the meeting with a loaded gun, after all). On the heels of this and the shooting in St. Louis a couple of months ago, [...]
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