I used to think that if only I got the right job, at the right place, working for the right CEO, that all of a sudden, all of the “crazy organization” stuff — if you’ve worked for a large organization, you darn well know what I mean — would go away. Bzzt! Wrong answer. In […]
Our Work And Why We Do It: Top Posts
My top posts recently were all about our work, why we do it, and how we can do it better. I really appreciate all of the conversations on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter; they have helped me to write better, more relevant posts. Thank you! 1. Run A Sane Team At A Crazy Company: 8 Steps […]
The Myth of Permanence And Impostor Syndrome
Things go wrong. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. Yet, when things go wrong, most of us, especially high achievers, start thinking that there’s something wrong with us. “I’m totally an incompetent fraud.” Impostor Syndrome. I know someone in the HR world who has worked at some of the biggest and best companies […]
Sharing Best Practices–With Competitors?
Although I’ve been in the private sector, I have spent most of my career in the public sector. I am often told that the type of networking that I did while I was in the private sector — sharing best practices even with other organization — was a unicorn, a myth. “Sure, sharing best practices […]
Do Remarkable Work: Six Steps
Darren Rowse, “the nicest man on the Internet,” and founder of ProBlogger.com, addressed a group of web content producers and marketers today at the Copyblogger Authority 2014 conference. If you substitute “reader” for “customer”, what he said was applicable to anyone trying to do remarkable work, like you. Here’s a summary. “Every time I come […]
Shadow IT Is Over! (If You Want It) And… Ninjas!
What I mean, of course, is that we need to stop using the phrase, “Shadow IT.” It is completely non-descriptive of exactly what we mean. You want “ninja IT” so that employees can stop being prisoners of IT. Let me explain. As you know if you’re a regular reader, my contention is that there is […]
The Dis(Honesty) Feature Film Kickstarter
I enjoy Dan Ariely’s work, partially because he writes well, partially because he can be wickedly funny, and partially because his findings are based on ingenious psychology experiments. I was delighted to find that he and Yael Melamede of SALTY Features launched a Kickstarter to produce a film on the subject. I backed it several […]
Top 5 Ways To Do Cool Stuff At Your Dorky Job
I’m returning from Interop in Vegas, fresh from a talk about how to climb the career ladder, “So You Want To Be A CIO”; I thought I’d share a point that resonated with the audience: everybody wants to do cool stuff at work, but: “nobody trusts you to do cool things if you don’t have […]
Got A Terrible Manager? So Does Everyone. Succeed Anyway.
People blame things on bad management because, well, it’s fun. But they’re also looking for a scapegoat. If you want to create great work, you must also realize that most management is imperfect and that you must succeed despite this. In one of my roles years ago, my staff was bitterly complaining about executive management […]
Team Trust: Leadership Not As Important As You Think?
I thought I’d share something interesting about trust among teams based on research I recently did. Team trust level is something that gets pooh-poohed by those who scorn “touchy feely” stuff, but it’s critical to any real success. Just about every two years, I’ve done research about enterprise project management, and I’ve just gotten back […]