“You’re the only parent of anyone I know who is pushing their art kid to art school and out of nursing.” I was talking to my oldest kid, encouraging her to apply to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School, a residential performing arts school which also has a visual arts program. We live in a …
What’s more important to job satisfaction: work language or work level? “It depends.”
Should I look for a Real Boss, one who can unpack a “stratum” more complexity than I can, who can think out farther that I can? Or should I look for a team that “speaks my language”? As always with things that are deeply true, “it depends”.
How an Urban Studies course taught me that my “friends” were wrong (and I wasn’t an idiot)
It’s odd how some of us get stuck in a rut of not understanding who we are. Being told to go in a direction that is antithetical to our core, we work where what we have is not what they want. For most people, this is probably nuts. If you aren’t one, maybe a tale from my past will help.
How You Talk About Deciding Affects Who Thinks You’re an Idiot
How you talk about work affects who will hire you or work with you. I was reminded of this recently. I have been talking with some senior executives at work about how to build the structure for writing complex text responses for some of our forms. They reached out because I’m an expert in the responses’ topic and I’ve worked …
The Trauma of Unemployment
So, you lost your job. Maybe it really is a “killer job market”. Yet here you are, sending out more resumes, hitting “Apply” in the job website, making the rounds. And nothing seems to be working. You keep at it, but it’s getting tiring. Your spouse, originally so supportive, is asking how long this is going to take. “Mary lost …
How Unemployment Endangers Everything You Love
Happy people are generally happy, no matter what. Unhappy people are generally unhappy no matter what. Whether genetics or childhood environment, it seems to be pretty set by the time you hit your mid-20s. It’s like we have a thermostat that gets set to a particular number. You might have something that changes the temperature suddenly, but the system will …
Your Work Life, Visually
Recently, we had all the Manasclerk Company folks’ CVs/resumes redone by a professional writer. Yes, I am well aware of the irony that a group of people who have all been paid to write had to hire someone else to write consulting bios. But that’s the way it is: a good writer seems to be flummoxed at his own tooting. …
Sometimes You Really Can’t Describe What You Do
I was really frustrated. I was trying to explain what a particular Work Swan — one of these people who are “hidden” high potentials, like Andersen’s “ugly duckling” — brought to the table and I just kept hitting a wall. I knew that this person brought a solid set of skills, but they were transformative. When you added him to …
#1 Book That New Executives Must Read
You just got promoted into the Executive suites. You’ve been a manager for awhile now, with ever-increasing managerial responsibilities. You know how to manage that smaller group. But now you’re going to be running a full line of business, your own PL. You know how to manage 100. How do you manage 2,000? Most business books have little to give …
Top Reasons Why Your Resume Says “Career stalled”
Have you ever considered that your career path is a lot like a movie? Film scholar Chris Simmons, a colleague of mine, lectured once on the massive blockbuster, Titanic. He showed how everything in its visual language spoonfed what the director wanted you to see, know and feel. The director made deliberate choices to make it easy for us as …