Monthly Archives: November 2008

Friday Funnies: The Corporate Lingo Directory

communicate

“COMPETITIVE SALARY”
We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors.

“JOIN OUR FAST-PACED COMPANY”
We have no time to train you.

“MUST BE DEADLINE ORIENTED”
You’ll be six months behind schedule on your first day.

“SOME OVERTIME REQUIRED”
Some time each night and some time each weekend.

“DUTIES WILL VARY”
Anyone in the office can boss you around.

“CAREER-MINDED”
Female Applicants must be childless (and remain that way).

“APPLY IN PERSON”
If you’re old, fat or ugly you’ll be told the position has been
filled.

“NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE:”
We’ve filled the job; our call for resumes is just a legal
formality.

“SEEKING CANDIDATES WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF EXPERIENCE”
You’ll need it to replace three people who just left.

“REQUIRES TEAM LEADERSHIP SKILLS”
You’ll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or
respect.

“GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS”
Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want
and do it.

“I’M EXTREMELY ADEPT AT ALL MANNER OF OFFICE ORGANIZATION”
I’ve used Microsoft Office.

“I TAKE PRIDE IN MY WORK”
I blame others for my mistakes.

“I’M PERSONABLE”
I give lots of unsolicited personal advice to co-workers.

“I’M EXTREMELY PROFESSIONAL”
I carry a Day-Timer.

“I AM ADAPTABLE”
I’ve changed jobs a lot.

“I AM ON THE GO”
I’m never at my desk.

“I’M HIGHLY MOTIVATED TO SUCCEED”
The minute I find a better job Im outta here.

Video: The Real Cause of the Economic Crisis

This is a great video by one of the sharpest people I have heard talk on the subject. The video is 30min long but well worth it. I promise that once you start watching it you won’t be able to stop.

more about “Video: The Real Cause of the Economic…“, posted with vodpod

Please! End Adolescence for the Sake of Work and our Country

Sohar Lazar

It’s time to declare the end of adolescence. As a social institution, it’s been a failure. The proof is all around us: 19% of eighth graders, 36% of tenth graders, and 47% of twelfth graders say they have used illegal drugs, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan. One of every four girls has a sexually transmitted disease, suggests a recent study for the Centers for Disease Control. A methamphetamine epidemic among the young is destroying lives, families, and communities. And American students are learning at a frighteningly slower rate than Chinese and Indian students.

The solution is dramatic and unavoidable: We have to end adolescence as a social experiment. We tried it. It failed. It’s time to move on. Returning to an earlier, more successful model of children rapidly assuming the roles and responsibilities of adults would yield enormous benefit to society.

Prior to the 19th century, it’s fair to say that adolescence did not exist. Instead, there was virtually universal acceptance that puberty marked the transition from childhood to young adulthood. Whether with the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah ceremony of the Jewish faith or confirmation in the Catholic Church or any hundreds of rites of passage in societies around the planet, it was understood you were either a child or a young adult.

In the U.S., this principle of direct transition from the world of childhood play to the world of adult work was clearly established at the time of the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin was an example of this kind of young adulthood. At age 13, Franklin finished school in Boston, was apprenticed to his brother, a printer and publisher, and moved immediately into adulthood.

John Quincy Adams attended Leiden University in Holland at 13 and at 14 was employed as secretary and interpreter by the American Ambassador to Russia. At 16 he was secretary to the U.S. delegation during the negotiations with Britain that ended the Revolution.

To continue reading click here.

Freedom is not Free

vetsday08-hi

Friday Funnies: Classic Office Prank

How would you like to show up to work and have everything wrapped in foil? It could happen…

officeprank

Book: The Commuter Marriage

commuter-marriage

As society becomes more mobile and as jobs move or involve travel more than ever, couples must learn new ways to stay connected both physically and mentally.

THE COMMUTER MARRIAGE:  Keep Your Relationship Close While You’re Far Apart (Adams Media 2008) speaks directly to the more than 4 million couples facing unique struggles created by the miles keeping them apart. Spending time apart is both a blessing and a problem. It can freshen your relationship and remind you what you love most about your partner; or, if you begin to resent the separation and don’t communicate well while you’re apart, your marriage could unravel quickly. With exercises and case studies, The Commuter Marriage helps long-distance couples stay connected via new technology, and offers invaluable guidance on how to make a long-distance relationship the best it can possibly be.

Tina B. Tessina, PhD, writes the Dr Romance blog and she Tweets @tinatessina.

HT: Peter Shankman

Avoiding Techie Turnover

nerd

Here are techie retention tips from Christopher Knight of ISP-Planet. (Guess what? These tips are good for retaining any employees.)

1. Make sure techies know what their next step or challenge is so that they know specifically how they can make more money or earn their next promotion. A sure-fire way to lose good tech talent is to do only annual reviews.

2. Stay in close mental contact. Your employees need to know that you care enough to help them reach the next level of personal or career success.

3. Don’t impose a cap that stops them from achieving their true potential. Provide an atmosphere that allows them to climb as high as their human abilities will allow.

4. Provide them with up-to-date, adequate equipment. If equipment is outdated, you will be able to retain only outdated technicians.

5. If your team works extreme hours, such as 60-70+ hours under extreme stress conditions, make sure you give them time off for themselves or their family, with pay.

6. Set aside play time each day or each week. Allow your staff to release tension and stress through play. Play can include nerf football, network quake, or any other game that allows every tech to escape the daily grind.

7. Drive sales so that your techies can have faith that they will be able to climb as your organization grows. Stagnating sales team performance will eventually spill over and result in your techies quitting on you.

8. Use stock-option incentives and/or bonuses based on performance, such as uptime, customer telephone, or e-mail return response, or increased server or network response times to ensure that your techies’ goals are in alignment with your organizational goals.

When you are recruiting and retaining—whether it’s techies or “the rest of us”—success starts with the same basic HR tool—the lowly job description. Yet in many organizations the job descriptions are neglected.

It’s not hard to see why—job description maintenance is easy to put off, and it’s not exactly glamorous HR. But that doesn’t mean it’s not critical.

Crazy Business or Brilliant Start-Up? #7

amazonwrap

As the holiday season approaches, parents around the globe are surely dreading the inevitable return of a phenomenon that shadows the giving of gifts of many shapes and sizes, but especially toys. Leaving in its wake a trail of victims with puncture wounds, bruises and lacerations—or simply in tears, Wrap Rage results from the virtually impenetrable packaging often used in shipping new products.

Fortunately, this year Amazon aims to do something about it. Thanks to a new, multi-year global initiative announced yesterday, Amazon is working with manufacturers to eliminate the causes of Wrap Rage while also minimizing the impact of packaging on the environment. The effort is focusing first on two kinds of items: those enclosed in hard plastic cases known as “clamshells” and those secured with plastic-coated wire ties, commonly used in toy packaging. As a result, 19 best-selling products are now available through Amazon in the US packaged in smaller, easy-to-open and recyclable cardboard boxes that protect the products within just as well, the company says. New, eco-iconic packaging on the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship, for example, eliminates 36 inches of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated package inserts, 36.1 square inches of printed folding carton materials, 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene and two molded plastic fasteners. Along with Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and electronics manufacturer Transcend are among the companies Amazon worked with on this first batch of products, and many more will follow in the years to come, it says. The project will expand across Amazon’s international sites beginning next year. In the meantime, Amazon has also put together a “Gallery of Wrap Rage” featuring videos and photos of the phenomenon, and customers are invited to upload their own.

Eco-minded initiatives are all very well, but when they also eliminate a major source of customer frustration? Then they become a no-brainer. Manufacturers around the world: follow this example!

Website
Contact Amazon

HT: Springwise

The Impact of Social Technology

social-media-landscape

Below are two links to articles I was interviewed for by the Quad-City Business Journal. The two articles deal with how to keep up with changing technology as well as the impact and challenges of the social networking/technology landscape. To say both of those are fairly heavy topics is an understatement, but I think you will enjoy them nonetheless.

Articles:

With technology always changing how do you keep up?

Opinions differ on use of social networking sites

Resume Lies Grow as Times Get Tough

resume-lies

With the economy on its way down and winter just around the corner, the competition for jobs is heating up. And when the going gets tough, the tough get… a little too creative.

According to employeescreenIQ, a provider of background screening services, roughly 10 percent of the education verifications completed by the company during the second quarter of 2008 revealed discrepancies. Nearly one of every 10 candidates is lying about his or her educational background.

Unemployment’s high; people need to put food on the table. And going in for a job that requires a degree and not having one is obviously going to put you at a disadvantage,” said Jason Morris, president and chief operations officer for employeescreenIQ. “So [candidates think,] ‘Why not lie?’ If you’re applying to 10 different jobs, maybe you’ll get one of them. Plus, they think people don’t check these things out.”

To continue reading click here.

Executive Retention is a Problem, Too

Below is my latest article from the Des Moines Business Record on Executive Retention. Please feel free to comment after reading it, I would love to hear your insight and opinion on the topic.

Article:

When I go out and speak to companies and organizations about the world of work, inevitably someone will ask me about retention. Typically, the question is framed around the lowest ranks of the company. I’ve yet to be asked about retention strategies targeted toward executives. You may not think executive retention is an issue. Think again.

The average tenure for company executives in America is four years. For a position that is expensive to fill and incredibly important for a company’s survival, I think a four-year average is barely enough to get any return on investment.

To read the whole article click here.