Management and Career Miscellany on the Lighter Side-a brief collection of anecdotes and personal perspectives on decision-making, project management, social networking. Oh, and some amusing and really bad career advice to ignore if you hear it.
One of the best lessons that I've learned from working on about two million fix-it and improvement projects with my Dad is to match the right tool to the job at hand. This is particularly true in searching for a job, which can be one of the more vexing projects for many people. Fortunately, there are a number of interesting new power tools available in the form of social networking platforms, to help today's job seeker. However, unlike the tools in the picture, there are few guidelines on how and where to to use these tools to good effect.
Note from Art: this one’s with a little help from my friends. I’ve been working a great deal with first-time leaders recently (my favorite groups!) and I posted a tweet to the extremely talented group of great people that I follow on Twitter asking what they wish someone would have told them when they started out in their leadership careers. Here are a few of their insightful thoughts with attribution, commingled with thoughts of my own.
It takes a certain amount of curiosity and yes, even courage for forty-something corporate types to even admit that there might just be something to a social networking tool like Twitter. Many of my contemporaries scoff and mock the tool and anyone participating. As leaders, we often lose our intellectual curiosity and courage as we move through our careers. We’ve seen it all before and we’re well aware in our own minds that when you take risks and do something a bit edgy, most of the time, bad things happen. We’ve seen fads come and go, and to many of us, this is just one more fad. To those involved, it is part of the fundamental rewriting of the rules...
The Top Ten Challenges of the New Leader, an update on my experience with Twitter (and why all marketers should join), and the Volunteer Management conundrum in our communities that we are capable of solving. Oh, and three developmental suggestions for your professional "To Do" list.
This is a wake-up call to my mid to late 30 to 40 something (and older) contemporaries. It’s time to figure out what all the noise is about social media and how to leverage it for yourself, your career and your organization.
I suspect that we are all engaging with former colleagues, friends and family members that have recently been furloughed from the corporate world. A few that I have spoken with are struggling to adapt to the new reality and are finding themselves floundering as they struggle to replace the comfortable routine of getting up and going somewhere with wandering around the house wondering what to do and where to start. Here are some ideas that I’ve either learned myself over time or have gained from others that have mastered the around of working and managing themselves without the services and security of a mother ship. I would love to hear your suggestions as well
As the economy continues to crumble around us, one of the common themes that I am hearing from people at all levels and in all forms of positions and professions is that they “don’t know what to do.” Much like the weather outside, people are frozen in place. Fear will do that, and it’s definitely not healthy. Here’s my randomly generated and in no specific order list of 10 ideas for anyone seeking to thaw-out and start moving forward in spite of the sub-zero headwinds.
While I stand behind my post on Personal Quality Programs as the best way to make improvements in your life, I am a goal-oriented person and resolutions are like a challenge just daring me to achieve. I cannot move through the New Year holiday without organizing my ambitions into a neat little list.
