I encountered a young woman with a staggering level of arrogance a few years ago. My colleagues had sent in a proposal for some consulting work, and I was representing them in a meeting. All their ideas were dismissed by the young woman as being too old. ‘But I wasn’t even born then!’ she said, …
I recently came across a 2014 article from The Atlantic Journal by Kevin Roose titled; The Woes of Wall Street; Why Young Bankers are so Miserable. Roose claims to have spent three years shadowing a group of young Wall Street workers. (That might have needed some explaining down at the precinct). He concluded that the …
In 1887, Nietzsche wrote; ‘one thinks with a watch in one’s hand, even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market.’ Nietzsche blamed his habit of distraction on a human desire for haste. ‘Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.’
David, who was mentioned last week, just sent a link on the subject of unhelpful business language. It was a review of the book, Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower: A Treasury of Unbearable Office Jargon by Stephen Poole.
David* (that is his real name) once lamented that some of his colleagues would rather die than say ‘we’ve stuffed it up.’ Instead, catchy phrases were used to paper over the cracks of reality. We’re not failing. We’re restructuring. We’re not looking at why we’re a mess. We’re conducting an organizational review. We’re not firing …
The whole Mindfulness trend was something I ignored for as long as I could. I felt sure it would require yoga pants and Birkenstocks. As it descended into the world of fridge magnets and miniature books full of quotes, I felt quietly justified that I had avoided another fad.
Observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Stanley Milgram, Professor of Social Psychology at Yale asked himself the question, could men like Eichmann be ordinary people who were simply following orders? How willingly would an ordinary human being obey an authority figure if they were instructed to perform an act that conflicted with their conscience? In …
I once saw the perfect job advertised. It called for a Brand Manager for Tim Tams* and I cried out ‘that’s mine!’ in spite of the fact that I hadn’t actually worked my way up through marketing or the world of fast moving consumer goods. I felt that I had been doing the role on …
Is there still a place for self-actualization at work? Abraham Maslow’s name is forever associated with human motivation due to his Hierarchy of Needs, but did you ever wonder, what inspired Maslow to look at motivation in the first place? Would you believe he was not remotely interested in workplace ambition or linking a needs …
It’s a good thing to have role models or mentors in our working lives, and indeed in our personal lives, but where do we find the decent ones? What if we pop our heads up like gophers in a cubicle prairie and find we are without the connections, relationships or basic confidence to ask someone …