I recently received this e-mail: "I work for City Government and the City Council has been throwing the word "Micromanage" around in the Council meetings. Since there is an election coming up, they all seem to have their own idea of what the word "Micromanage" means (of which some are way off base). What is micromanaging and what is not?"
Micromanaging has become a hot buzzword. I use it, my...
My editor and I were sitting on a bench on the edge of a park discussing my awkward syntax when we noticed a young boy walking with his father. At the edge of the swings and slide area was a wooden border about one foot high.
The little boy was balancing on this wooden mini-fence when he fell -- taking a tumble such as only an inexperienced and innocent two year old can manage. He...
We humans are complex beasts. We live, love, hate, befriend, stress, grieve, excite, depress, yearn and everything in between. To make matters worse, we are a potpourri; a hodgepodge buffet of everything so that the best and worst can even occur within the same psyche.
We are in both an incredibly fantastic web of neurons and a real mess.
Will Rogers said he never met a man he...
In the very dim early morning light I hear a large truck pull up just down the beach from us. I look out the tent window and see men with guns getting out of the back. Either these are bandidos, the Zapatistas invading Quintana Roo or the Mexican Army. Fortunately for us, it's the latter.
We get out of the tent and they stop by for a chat. The sergeant speaks great Spanish but it's clear...
There are employees and then there are breakthrough employees. Once in a blue moon the average company hires someone that can make a dramatic difference. This is usually done by chance in the routine hiring process...someone retires, quits or is fired and someone else is hired to take their place.
The sheer number of hires means that on occasion someone with superior abilities will get...
The nasty word 'spying' conjures up images of hidden cameras, microphones and James Bond. "Hey, watcha doin', spying on me"? For some reason one is supposed to feel very much intimidated by being spied upon. A big social issue in the United States is how much surveillance should be "allowed" by government and business?
Certainly in business big thefts do occur. Employees sell trade...
One of the true laments from management today is that employees cannot express themselves with the written word. Owners and stockholders have the same complaints about management. Today in the age of the paperless office the importance of the written word is increasing especially as direct live voice contact becomes more and more problematic.
If you want to communicate, you have to...
Like the rat in the cage we are driven by rewards. It's only human and also perhaps rat nature. Suffice it to say it's nature.
So when compensation, the reward, becomes stagnant so does productivity. If like rats we are paid by the time we spend in the cage, then the expected level of productivity is simple compliance.
By focusing on minimum standards employees tend to get there...
You get what you pay for is the consumer's mantra. Common sense knows that if it costs less it is more likely of inferior quality.
Unfortunately quality is relative and subjective and even unwieldy. For that reason and common sense the value the customer puts on quality is where the quality line should be drawn.
Still it is not rocket science here; a rather straightforward case of...
A new study tells us we should stop worrying about worrying as if we didn't already know. It all started when some group of research pointy heads found out that worrying about paying health insurance premiums was causing people to get sick. Their conclusions were the patient was going to be sick anyway so may as well jack up the premiums.
Now we are told if one worries about having a...
