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> Nikola Tesla visited Henry Ford at his factory, which was having some kind of difficulty. Ford asked Tesla if he could help identify the problem area. Tesla walked up to a wall of boilerplate and made a small X in chalk on one of the plates. Ford was thrilled,
HR
For most of my career I was unaware of the full extent of the value of HR. This all changed about two years ago. As is the case with many things, this was the result of a screw-up on my part. Some would call it a failure, but you know
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At the risk of sounding like some sort of motivational speaker, here’s what I believe to be true: failure is a choice. Well, at least my definition of failure is a choice. You can solve any problem by simply redefining your terms. Therefore, let me redefine, or perhaps refine
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One of the common reasons for people to disengage at work is not feeling appreciated. People phrase this problem in various ways: not feeling seen, not feeling valued, not feeling rewarded. These subtle differences in phrasing can lead to jumping to different types of solutions. Language is a magical thing.
Let me try to set this up with a few headlines from the last year or so: * Buckle Up for Another Facebook Election [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/technology/facebook-election.html] * Twitter’s Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump [https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension] * Facebook
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I don’t consider myself a risk-taker. Far from it. The entire last chapter was about figuring out ways to reduce our risk by no longer having to take big bets. Now — just to mess with your mind — let me try to push you in exact opposite direction. I’m
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> “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal When I first moved into a management position, I struggled. I felt everybody was bringing their problems to me now, and I had to solve them. I was
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Where does our obsession with feedback come from? “Please give me feedback!” “Here’s a feedback form, please fill it in!” “The first 10 feedback submissions get a sticker!” And as we wait for feedback to trickle in, we read books on receiving books well, such as “Thanks for the
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“I think what you’re attempting to do here is really great...” “But…?” “Right… but I think it’s not going to work.” This is one of those classic aha moments when people first learn about it during some communication training: if there’s a “but” in your communication, people
Writing about the detrimental effects of rewards in No More Rewards [https://zef.plus/no-more-rewards/], one thing kept nagging at me. A few weeks earlier we had held a virtual conference for our company and community called MatterCon [https://handbook.mattermost.com/contributors/mattercon]. One of the highlights for me
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In 2008 the world went through a severe financial crisis. A large part of our economy collapsed, in large part because financial institutions had created a pretty unsustainable system of mortgage-backed securities. It was pretty bad. Fingers were pointed; new rules put in place; people yelled at. “Oh them financial
