Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
It was front page news, until it wasn’t; a white person playing the race card on a Black man in New York City’s Central Park on Memorial Day.
The viral video of George Floyd’s tragic death at the hands of cops in Minneapolis bumped Amy Cooper, the white person, off her moment of notoriety. The story merits revisiting.
Start with what happened.… Read the rest
What we’re missing,” my colleague Deena Fischer observed, “is all the in-betweens.”
Deena’s referral was to the dynamics of our four day in-person coaching development sessions; breakfasts together, comments passed in hallways or a shared beverage and dinner at day’s end. All times when our coaching study group swapped stories, shared common threads, and deepened our bond.
Early June was to be our next in-person meetup in Santa Barbara, unlikely now in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.… Read the rest
The time around Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite (great food, few surprises, and basketball season gets in gear) but it gets sobering fast when people die. These last seven days were sober in the extreme.
A former Atara Bio colleague (mid 30’s), a friend from San Francisco (age early 50-ish) and a college fraternity brother from Willamette U. (mid 60’s) all died in their sleep last week.… Read the rest
Good job hunting takes time. Now is that time to start.
While you’ll sometimes see churn at the end of the year – my old shop, for example, is hemorrhaging as people leave and folks complain on GlassDoor – but most people who are want to move to a new job tend stay in their roles through the end of the year and start job hunting in the first quarter of the new year.… Read the rest
A former colleague I’ll call “Annie” confided that “90% of her communication” was via email. Annie was physically located with her HR clients at that time.
It’s a lousy strategy for Annie – trust me, she’s gotten plenty of feedback that’s been ignored, including use of a pissy, pedantic (“Anniegrams”) writing style – and for you.
Read below and you’ll see why overuse of email disables your effectiveness , under leverages the human connection and under leverages your connections with people. … Read the rest
We know the adage “life imitates art.” This is life imitates job search.
Great jobs in organizations have six ingredients; a boss who motivates, a values aligned culture, work team compatibility, a fit for your life, appropriately challenging work, and – to crib a Steve Jobs’ phrase – one more thing.
That one more thing?
The same thing I saw in Erin and Ben’s wedding this summer.… Read the rest