Well, now that all is said and done, I know what it feels like to be a needle in a haystack. My appearance on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch is behind me and I must say, I’m no worse for the wear. But, boy-o-boy, what a whirlwind it was! I received a call late last Tuesday afternoon, and by the time I hung up the phone, I was scheduled to be “on set” at CNBC on Thursday morning – one day later. 

I had great time and learned a lot. There was a wide and interesting array of guests, all of whom brought varied experience and offered different perspectives that ranged from living life...Read More

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Talk about teamwork! I was on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch this past week, and I’ve got to tell you, I was impressed. 

Operationally, they ran like a fine-tuned factory. Boom, boom, boom. Everything got done. They turned on a dime. But they were also gracious, warm and professional people. It was such a pleasure to watch an organization hum like a well-oiled machine and at the same time do it with so much “heart and soul.” 

It just goes to show you that top-notch talent makes a top-notch team and the results speak for themselves. See for yourself on July 1^st at 10:00 pm on CNBC.

 

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Chances are good that any reasonable person would find the monkey in this careerbuilder commercial annoying if he/she were trying to work.  So, what would you say to get him to stop? 

In an article recently published on CNN.com, I was quoted as saying that there is basically one way to deal with a person whose annoying habits are driving you nuts at work.  Like it or not, you have to talk about it, if not for your own sanity, then for the "greater good" of the organization.  Somehow, someway, the irritati...Read More

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Just as I was posting my last blog entry about how political correctness has infiltrated the workplace and exacerbated our need to name things a certain way, it triggered additional thought about our dependence on labels and definitions in the first place. While having words to identify things is admittedly a linguistic necessity, I think often times it also comes at the price of considerable distortion.

Here’s an example of what I mean…

Last year I’d been written about in the New York Times. The story was about dyslexia in the workplace. Naturally, as the feature on the front page of the Sunday Job Market section, it (and I) got some exposure. That exposure prompted many a phone ca...Read More

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Boy, talk about the pendulum swinging one way and then back again. We started out in the “PC” revolution where it seemed that every descriptive label used in our language was being called into question. Today, particularly in the workplace, that same political correctness has evolved and embedded itself into our corporate lexicon to the point that we don’t even know it’s there anymore.

But yesterday one of my business partners reminded me of just how crazy it was back when the whole “PC” movement began. We’d been talking about our days together at CHANEL when she recalled an exchange that took place during a big meeting with a big account.

...Read More

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Sometimes I get a weird reaction when I explain our company and say that we don’t think there is any difference between marketing and training.  People have a hard time grasping the idea at first since historically the two have always operated in silos strictly independent of one another.  One department always handles the “people” while another takes care of the “products.”

But if you think about it, they are more similar than they are different.  Each has an audience and whether you are a marketer or a trainer, you need to motivate, educate and affect a target group of people.  Good marketers sell products, good trainers sell learning and good companies integrate the two.  A good marketer would never pu...Read More

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Who would ever have thought that a new haircut could get you fired?  Well, it happened to a woman in Canada.  Stacey Fearnall cut off her long red locks for a cancer charity and was told that she didn’t have a job when she returned to work with her newly shaven head.

People are crying foul.  Some are screaming gender discrimination.  My guess is that they are probably right, becasue men don't get fired for being bald.  Others simply don’t think it’s right.  Then there are those like myself who just don’t get it.  What was it about having short hair that made her no longer a suitable waitres...Read More

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It’s hard to believe that things can go as wrong as they do sometimes.   In fact, I was told about a situation last week that I’m still trying to reconcile. 

Here’s what happened. A company made a job offer to a man for a senior executive spot after a long and complicated negotiation. He started. Day one went swimmingly – or so it seemed. But that night the CEO of the company received an email from the new employee stating that he had no choice but to rescind his acceptance of the offer. Did I mention that he’d already started?

Apparently, this gentleman had seen a printout from the Internet hanging on...Read More

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Like many things these days in corporate life, the needs and trends around training employees are changing. Gone are the days of traditional models and linear learning. Whereas we used to have curriculum designers, facilitators and measurement professionals, we now need graphic designers, technologists and programmers too. I predict that in the near term, training presentations the way we know them will no doubt be a thing of the past, meaning that overall training strategies need to shift, starting with the selection and recruitment process.  

So the training teams of the future will be a configuration of a new and different set of skills and will require roles that look something like this…

►        Curriculum Designers with...Read More

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I have long had issues with personality tests. In fact ever since I learned about how they (along with hand-writing analysis) were being used in organizations to make hiring decisions back when I was in graduate school, I found the whole idea preposterous. Today, I still find them inherently restrictive because they box people into a set of definitions based on gross generalizations, which makes them about as effective and predictive as horoscopes.  

Think about it. What if they’re wrong? 

For those people who are believers in the utility of these tests, they have to know that the results can not be right one hundred percent of the time. That, in and of itself, is intrinsically risky. In addition, t...Read More

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Something really interesting happened to me last week during my attendance at a focus group for a major financial institution. We were asked to provide feedback on the positioning of a new credit card product, for which there was an annual fee. We were given four different marketing statements to choose from.

What shocked me was that the group unanimously favored the one statement that I hated. Its overall message was one of customer appreciation.   Basically it thanked cardholders for their loyalty and offered them “access” to a new program as a reward for their “good behavior,” meaning responsible spending.  It resembled the kind of verbiage you might find in a frequent flyer program ...Read More

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So there’s yet another pregnancy discrimination suit in the works and in the press, this time involving an $85,000-dollar-a-year assistant.  This week, The Daily News reported that a former TV sitcom actress is suing her employer for wrongful termination based on the fact that she was planning to have a baby and in the process of trying to get pregnant.

I always struggle with these discrimination cases because it’s hard to know who and what to believe.  With each side equally as convinced as the other that it is right, the arguments and the legal fees mount, often times seeming to get no closer to the truth. 

In this particular case, the boss accused of discriminating is ...Read More

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