3 things you can do to fix your organisational culture
How can you fix your organisational culture? It’s the age-old question that just about everyone asks at some point in their working lives: how do you fix a workplace culture that’s dysfunctional and toxic? The short answer is: you can’t. Sorry about that. The long answer is you can, but it takes a significant amount of energy, time and (probably)
Whatever happened to free agent nation?
Back in 1997, Fast Company published an article that was a wake-up call for businesses. Its premise was that workplaces were being flipped: the old model of the boss calling the shots and having all the power was going the way of the dinosaur. The employee, as a valuable knowledge worker, was now in the
7 frustrations of highly useless people
Steven Covey wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and we all know he is the pin-up boy for effectiveness. Colleagues, managers and peers love to quote frequently from his book. I’ve read it and it makes a lot of sense. But what I’ve found is that in workplaces in particular (the ones I’ve
Chaos: three observations about change from the workplace trenches
This week, I left a job I had been in for three years. I came to this job licking my wounds from another workplace that didn’t work out so well. In that workplace—which I entered with the hope of finally building some sort of career—I exited within five months, feeling completely disempowered, my confidence shattered. I questioned
Life’s disappointments (Part 2)
I wrote the first part of this post back in March 2014. Thought it was about time I finished it off! My career has been an endless succession of ultimately unsatisfying jobs In the late 1980s, I left a series of bank jobs and temporary employment, and got myself university edumacated at the ripe old
Recruitment: still a flawed (bullshit) process
About six years ago, when I was desperately looking for work, I became so disenchanted with the recruitment process, I started a blog/website called Even It Up! in an attempt to even up the power imbalance between the jobseeker and recruiter. Here was I: a Masters student with a GPA so good I was awarded
The One Thing every new employee needs (and never ever gets)
This post was first published on 4 February 2012. It’s still a rare workplace that onboards new employees effectively. Information and communication are key tools, but are used inadequately. What every new employee needs – and never, ever gets – is a So You’re New Here and You’ll Need to Know This Stuff Handbook. As
On entitlement, work and career
To my horror*, I have recently discovered that I have a sense of entitlement. If I examine where it comes from, I can see it’s premised on my education and being smart. I have several degrees, and when I work, I bring my education and my knowledge to the cubicle. I have to, because it’s
The challenge of being a knowledge worker
In the 21st century, the workforce of the western world is supposed to be forged around knowledge. You can see this trend very clearly, with the slow, strangled death of manufacturing (despite being propped up by handouts from the government) and the rise and rise of digital work. Who knew coding apps would have been
Cards on the table
I have found in my 30 years in the workforce that there are two types of workplaces. The first kind is where information is freely available and moves in predictable, organic currents between people. The flow of information changes as and when it is needed to do the work that is required. In this workplace,
On truth and honesty
I have written here about honesty, and more particularly, about me being an honest person. It is part of my essence. It is who I am, almost like a personal brand. My brand promise, which is part of my underlying core values of integrity, authenticity and courage, is that I will always be honest. Without
On authority
Waaaaaaay back in the 1960s and 1970s, before university ethics committees stamped out these sorts of experiments, two researchers wanted to know more about how human beings reacted to authority, and how positional power impacted relationships. Stanley Milgram, a researcher at Yale, was interested in how Nazi Germany came to be, particularly the horrific and tragic