Executive Overreach

In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton said that Bill didn’t need to resign because of the extramarital high jinx he had with Monica Lewinsky. That Monica was an adult at the time and made her own decision. Whether you’re “I’m with Her” or “Lock Her Up” on the Hillary scale, [...]

How do I fire someone?

If you’ve been following along with me, you know that I’m a huge fan of clearing dead or diseased wood from your organization. Nothing rots an organization more effectively than people who don’t carry their share of the load, or who complain all the time, or are jerks. These people [...]

Testing Really Doesn’t Work

I have all kinds of anecdotal evidence that personality testing doesn’t work, but I’ve never had a case that I could talk about publicly, or that was so widely known that it would prove the point for me. Today NASA came to my rescue. If you haven’t read my thoughts [...]

Wal-Mart’s Flexible Employee Scheduling

Some smart accountant at Wal-Mart woke up one day recently and realized that, with 1.6 million “associates”, they spend a lot of money on people. So, like any major employer, they decided to figure out ways to cut their costs on this huge expense. However, unlike most other large employers, [...]

Are employee awards a good idea?

When the discussion of how to compensate and reward employees comes up, almost invariably someone comes up with the idea of the “employee of the month” award. Sometimes the name of the award is less tired, maybe it’s outstanding associate of the year. Or the top achiever of the quarter. [...]

How long should I keep a short-timer around?

They have decided to leave, now you have to decide how long to keep them around. In general, there are two schools of thought: Get them out the door as fast as you can. Get as much work out of them as you can. There are a lot of variations [...]

Should I try to convince someone to stay?

It’s a common management situation: someone walks into your office, and says “I think I’m leaving.” The next move is yours, and it stumps a lot of managers. Should you: Try to talk them out of leaving Beg and plead for them to stay Wish them the best of luck [...]

Drug Policy as Marketing Tool?

The Ubiquitous Stanley Steemer Truck Stanley Steemer is running ads (at least in the Seattle area) that are the first I’ve ever seen where a company is using their employee drug policy as a marketing tool. In the ads, a pretty woman (housewife?) is shown with concern over letting strangers [...]

Can titles be compensation?

Dilbert It’s a classic Dilbert cartoon: in lieu of a raise, I’m going to promote you to “senior whatever”. Not only does it happen (or it wouldn’t be so funny), but it’s commonplace. But the question is: is it wrong? Well, if you listen to the CFO, no it’s not [...]

How important are titles?

Job titles serve a number of purposes, and treating them lightly is done at your peril. Job titles help to indicate organizational structure to newcomers and outsiders, they tell people the relative importance of the person they are working with, and they reward their holders. Job titles serve a number [...]