Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
They are the four most dreaded words to hear when you need help: “It’s not my job.”
Guess what? It just might be your job.
Maybe it’s the intersection of speaking this past weekend to 12 bright women enrolled in my colleague and friend Stacy Blake-Beard’s leadership and gender B-school class at Mills College or an upcoming call with Shereef Bishay (TedSF: Applying Open Source Principles to the Work Place here) but one thought came to mind when I heard those words.… Read the rest
Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyewski (pronounced /ʃəˈʃɛvski/shə-SHEV-ski) once noted after his Blue Devils got beat, “We lost, and that’s the main thing that went wrong.”
Hopefully you take have a little more introspection than the storied (and highly successful) Coach K. The fact of the matter is that losses – bumps in your smooth career road – are the types of things that likely boost your career downstream if two things happen: 1) the bumps mostly occur earlier in your career rather than later, and 2) you have the smarts to learn from them.… Read the rest
Stanford University professor Bob Sutton, whose work I admire, authored the book “The No Assholes Rule.” Good book, great topic, and some wonderful thoughts about how to work with and / or avoid workplace assholes.
Unfortunately the “rule” doesn’t work in most firms. And even while asshole behavior is corrosive and cancerous to the effectiveness of most companies, here’s why jerks and assholes will continue to exist in the workplace.… Read the rest