Newton Did Not Work in an Open Office

Isaac Newton did not sit in an open-air cubicle design, sharing documents in the cloud and participating in global group discussions on his iPad by Apple. Instead, he sat under a tree and looked at the clouds, and an apple fell on his head. Sometimes, knowledge workers need the solitude to think. We have a […]

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Hanging On To New Hires

We talked the other day about holding on to long-time employees, but try not to let your new ones get away, either. When you hire new employees, you need to remember that they have been in job-hunting mode for a while, and just because they have started a new job does not mean they’ve flipped […]

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Longevity is NOT Overrated

These days we have accepted the idea that employees will move from job to job pretty casually. This is especially true in certain industries, like finance, and it’s also very common in countries with low unemployment, like Singapore and Thailand. The days of lifetime employment seem to be gone, particularly within creative fields where the […]

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Everybody Gets a Voice, One Person Gets a Vote

When I was a nuclear officer in the US Air Force, I adopted a leadership technique called the Two-Objection Policy. It was a way for my crew partner and I to make decisions in a fast-paced environment, and it ensured that not only did a decision get made but also that there was a chance […]

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Lessons From the Gym: Starting the Change Process

Office meeting

Anyone who knows me knows I am a big fan of taking lessons from personal fitness and bringing them into the workplace (I even wrote a book about it). This is one reason I encourage firms to design a wellness program and help their employees maintain a healthy work-life integration. Not only do you have […]

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