Welcome back… feel free to look around and see what’s new!
There’s a lot being written these days about employee engagement and retention. It seems employee engagement levels are pretty low right now, and many experts think we’ll see a significant number of workers looking for new opportunities once the economy improves.
That could spell trouble for a lot of companies. A big exodus of staff means significant recruiting and onboarding costs. But it also means a significant drain in your “brain trust” or intellectual capital. And that more than anything can …

Employee engagement is at an all-time low. I’ve been hearing a lot of hard working people express frustration about their current work environment. This is common anytime the global economy starts to rise from a recession. Right now, most organizations are staffed with an abundance of over-qualified personnel due to the previous surge of downsizing and layoffs. When this happens, we see leaders begin to surface in new industries and new organizational talent position themselves within current organizations, which will allow for new markets to develop. We are about to …

As commander of the Third Army, General George S. Patton was known for getting the job done. General Patton succeeded because he was a realist who understood what was going on in the trenches. He always took into consideration the big picture and assessed what needed to get done…and then did it without any delay or excuses. More than anything, he hated orders that didn’t make sense or put his men in harm’s way. If the orders were outrageous, he would tweak them just enough so that the troops could …

“Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous position” – Sun Tzu
How can an ancient Chinese general be considered a business guru twenty-five hundred years later? By having written a book on military strategy called The Art of War. Business people from all industries have considered this little book a classic for their own development. The book covers the intellectual side of war and lays out a strategy for “psyching out” the enemy. Many a business mogul believes that Sun Tzu’s teachings are an indispensable guide for …

Warren Bennis, the founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, believes that organizations don’t realize that they possess a vast source of untapped knowledge, what he refers to as “intellectual capital”. If even a fraction of the organization’s employees contributed their knowledge to creating solutions and/or growth potential, an organization’s overall results would skyrocket! Unfortunately, with the current overwhelming lack of employee engagement, studies are showing that employees are frequently griping that nobody listens to them.
To increase growth and employee engagement, …

After posting Honesty Doesn’t Seem To Be The Best Policy last week, I received several emails asking for a follow up post. So, I guess I’ll label this one as “Part Two”.
Mark Twain said it best when he told us “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” as it seems to be a constant refrain in corporate america concerning positive feedback: nobody receives enough of it until it’s too late. Heck, in some industries or trades, it’s basically nonexistent…that is unless of course you’d rather get negative …