As our calendar year comes to a close, reviewing what you worked on and the big changes we made together, here were the top issues of 2010:

Resolving Conflict Across Generations
Increasing Engagement and Efficiency
Building Trust Throughout the Organization
Better Communication to Increase Productivity
Re-visiting Corporate Vision, Mission and Values and Getting Clarity
Creating Commitment and Improving Accountability
Understanding and Using Workplace Motivators
Improving [...]

950 years of business experience.  No, it’s not a typo. I just met with a group of business people in Washington State for lunch. Between them, they have 950 years of experience, and the headcount was only 30.  That’s approximately 32 years business experience each, if I did my math right. (I have 33 years in business for [...]

A Primer on Loss and Grief for Leaders
If you are running a company of any size, you hear about some relative or friend of your workforce dying almost every day. In even the smallest company, there is loss all around your employees. Loss you don’t see, and I am about to make you aware of. [...]

  This morning at our weekly MAC Toastmasters Meeting I was asked to give a short recap of my Saturday breakout session “Pumping Mental Iron”. One of the things I didn’t get to do on Saturday, since my time was shortened (read my last blog post) from 50 minutes to about 35-40 minutes, was to do [...]

If a job could talk, what would it say about itself?
What would it say are the behaviors, key motivators, and personal skills necessary for superior performance?
 
Job Benchmarking is a process that tells you that very thing, about any position in your organization. 
 
80% of turnover is caused by bad hiring decisions, and a job analysis is the most [...]

Look at your business for a moment.  How can you increase your viability?  Even in the largest companies, there are areas where we are “flying by the seat of our pants”, as my mother used to say. 

Are you measuring what your competitors are measuring? What ratios are they looking at, that perhaps you are not? [...]

last night I watched the premiere of a new show, right after the Super Bowl.  It was called “Undercover Boss”.  Another on the long list of ubiquitous reality tv shows.  Truthfully, I expected to be turning it off after a few minutes.  That did not happen.  In fact, I was amazed, impressed, and am a [...]

“OMG, Here she goes again with the EQ stuff!  I’m focused on the bottom line and don’t have time do deal with all this ’soft stuff’…”
I know, but here’s the deal. It’s all soft stuff.  Yes, that’s what I said.  It’s all soft stuff.  Just imagine, you show up at your office, and find out all [...]

In my last post I talked about disengagement.  Let’s continue the discussion, first, by giving you a “state of the people” address.  Then let’s look at some actions you can take to proactively position yourself for the next battle:
Some things you should know:  

According to a recent study by the Washington-based Corporate Executive Board, the [...]

I just returned from Phoenix, where a few hundred of the world’s top management consultants were gathered for our annual conference.  The theme of workplace engagement kept coming up; so much so, that we decided that our February 2010 theme is “Re-Engaging the WorkForce”.
As much as you might be thinking “What?  Anyone with a job in today’s [...]