Forest for the trees…

Penelope Trunk is a freelance writer with a column in the Boston Globe, and calls herself “The Brazen Careerist.” She recently wrote an article that was published on Yahoo!’s personal finance page, entitled Steer Clear of Bad Job-Hunting Advice.

The article lists 8 currently “Bad Rules” for job hunting/hunters, and includes some known HR staples such as resume misspellings, complete disclosure, etc. Then, a littany of comments follow her article, likely many of them from human resources professionals. As Penelope has given me her permission to do so, I’ll list the 8 “Bad Rules” here for convenience:  (more…)

Executive Life…How Hard Can It Be?

Once again, the spotlight continues to shine brightly on senior executives. Not that it shouldn’t, mind you, but some focus is deserved — some may not be.

For instance, we’ve all heard about Bob Nardelli’s $210M “severance” from Home Depot, amid falling stock prices. What you have to dig to discover, of course, is that Bob was #2 or #3 behind Welch at GE, in line for succession. When Immelt got the nod (deservedly), Nardelli and a couple of others “passed over” sought and accepted CEO jobs elsewhere. Not uncommon in the world of succession, is it??

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2006 Is Gone…So What?

Well, I’ll tell you “so what.” At least from my way of thinkin’… 

First, the year started out as good as it could… Texas walloped USC in the Rose Bowl, as Vince Young demonstrated his “unstoppableness” (my word, you can use it) against a team with two – count ‘em, TWO – Heismann Trophy winners. Methinks that the trophy voters should have reconsidered, as should the Houston Texans in ignoring Vince in their first round draft selection. But that’s another story; you don’t want me to start on that…
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2007 – Is It A Light, or A Train?

So, what does 2007 hold for the human resources community? More of the same (fortunately and unfortunately), and some new things to consider. Using my Kreskin-like powers (age-check…?), my crystal ball, and reading the Earl Grey leaves in the bottom of my Costa Maya coffee cup…
E-Learning will finally take hold. Content is rich, lower lost productivity costs are necessary and reasonable, podcasts and videoblogs make distribution inexpensive.  (more…)

Change, Change, Change…

As always, “The times, they are a’changin'”

In my upcoming At C-Level, I make mention of a survey I recently completed, in which many of you participated. The full results should be available shortly, but I did want to give you a sneak preview.

From a long-range perspective, with only senior executives (more than 20% were CEO/COOs) participating, here are the top 3 issues you identified:

1. Finding, hiring, developing and retaining talent,

2. Organizational changes, outsourcing, merger/acquisition assimilation, and

3. Compliance, poilitical change, legislation.

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Stop Mediocrity – A 12 Step Program??

Interesting. In my newsletter as well as a blog posting here recently, I mention the growth and seeming acceptance of mediocrity in organizations today. 

Must’ve struck a nerve.

I’ve received almost a dozen comments on that specific topic, and several emails from current or past clients who believed I was referring to their firm in my example!

This should give us some insight to the general ubiquity of mediocrity in the workplace, and its acceptance as a norm, or at least a tolerable cost of doing business.

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