SuccessfulWorkplace

The following is a guest post by Sean Conrad. Sean is a Certified Human Capital Strategist and Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software. For more of Sean’s insights on talent management best practices and creating a coaching culture, read his posts on the Halogen Software blog. Watch out! One of the most dreaded times of the year […]

Following on from the recent blog Why the CIO hates Christmas. So in the cheery spirit of Christmas, I thought I’d turn my attention to the COO or Operations Director: The one who keeps the wheels turning, no matter how much grit is thrown into the innermost workings. So why do COOs hate Christmas? It […]

We’re about to enter the holiday stretch for many parts of the world. This is a great time to look at vacation and how it is evolving as a part of our work. After all, do we work to live or live to work? Cogs in a machine Vacation is a legacy of the Industrial […]

You might think that the corporate human resources function doesn’t have much of a role in improving business processes, such as product development, operations, customer service, or distribution. But I’ve found that it does. HR can propel or inhibit process improvement because it has an outsized influence on people: how they are recruited, rewarded, and […]

A recent blog post by Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) created one of the “POW!” moments for me. The writeup was about organizations that always deal with “problems,” and what happens when there are no more problems to solve. Problem solvers don’t function well when they don’t have any problems to solve. They often seem lost. We’re […]

Profound changes in an organization must be led from the top, but human resource professionals can play a big part in making them happen. Consider HR’s role in accelerating Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates’ operational improvement initiative. This 4,500-employee Massachusetts healthcare group embarked on “Care Improvement” three years ago. Chief Human Resources Officer Dan Michaud told me how HR has […]

Psychopaths lack empathy, are pathological liars, have an enormous sense of self-worth, are impulsive, irresponsible and won’t accept responsibility for their own actions. They make up 1% of the total population, 25% of the criminal population. But do you recognize the traits. Perhaps in the upper reaches of your corporation or our Governments? The Psy-Fi […]

Living in Southern California and having an orange tree in your yard isn’t that big of a deal. We waited years for the first fruit to appear, and when it did, we knew immediately we had a problem. The branches on a small tree couldn’t hold the heavy, green oranges. It was about to split […]

From the top to the bottom: Paid for who you are (credibility) $$$$$$$ Paid for what you know (knowledge & skill) $$$$ Paid for what you do (time & attendance)…………………..$$ Are you investing effort to get better at the level you are now, or in climbing to the next level up?

Over the last few years, being a leader has gotten tougher and tougher. Being a CEO was probably never so stressful as it has now become. But leadership does not necessarily suggest a CXO. It also is about everyone part of an organization. And things aren’t really easy for them either. An editorial that appeared […]

I’m a devout follower of Seth Godin (@SethsBlog). I encourage you to follow him. A recent post focused on how the best strategy in the Universe is useless without a focus on executing the details of that strategy. That really hit home for me as process person. There has been a lot of recent attention […]

Last week, I listened to SAP’s weekly radio program, In the Cloud with Game-Changers, and the topic was the social enterprise. The program featured a panel of the following very talented social business experts: Brent Leary, Partner at CRM Essentials Sameer Patel, Global VP of Enterprise Social Software at SAP Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Social Media […]

Profits. Topline. Bottomline. Data points that outlay the very purpose of an organization. Visible indices to enterprise success and, therefore, leadership. But I’d argue that there really is more to leadership than just those indices. For, those indices represent the outcome. The end. It is the not-so-visible means that characterizes leadership best. Two key aspects […]

The following was first published on Harvard Business Review. To deliver more value, the human resources function needs to spend more time accelerating operational improvement and less time on its traditional administrative and compliance activities. As Randy MacDonald, senior vice president of HR at IBM, told me, “It’s important for HR to decide what is […]