As I was cleaning out files, I found one of my articles that was published in June 2004.  Here it is with some slight editing that was specific to the time period in which it was written. Ok – I’ll admit it – I’m a management culture geek. I can’t stop thinking about the so-called […]

Sigmund Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind, including our dreams… and a primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs behavior to a greater degree than people suspect. So for all you amateur psychologists, analyze this: I’m standing, waist deep, in the middle of a large pond or lake, with all my […]

California and San Francisco employment laws are some of the most complex in the nation. The recent Fair Chance Ordinance that went into effect on August 13 requires employers with more than 20 employees to limit the use of criminal history information and follow certain procedures and restrictions when inquiring about and using conviction history […]

What motivates people? This is a really great question. Motivated To Leave… It reminds me of a ritual I actually witnessed in my first job upon graduating from college. I was a supervisor for a market research company in Wisconsin. Most of the employees could tell you whether a 12 ounce tube of Colgate sold […]

I wanted to write about how to motivate yourself…. but I just couldn’t get motivated to write about that. Not only was I not motivated to write about self-motivation, I wasn’t motivated about much of anything. Have you ever had days or periods of time like that?   Things aren’t great and they are bad, either. […]

Research shows that people who predominantly express positive emotions are often physically and emotionally healthier than people who have negative attitudes. Positive emotions would be: love, joy, gratitude, compassion, appreciation… Negative emotions would be: anger, resentment, blame, shame, guilt … Frankly, I don’t think anyone deliberately sets out to be a negative, angry person. But […]

So many companies have a core value or a stated platitude that “our employees are our greatest asset” and yet their head of HR doesn’t have a seat at the strategic leadership table. From my experience, as a VP of Human Resources for several companies and working as an organizational change consultant for organizations for […]

Gossip, back stabbing, sniping, snarky mean-girls and corporate bullies all contribute to toxic work environments. When there is a corporate culture of fear and intimidation, it’s toxic. Of course, no one would ever own up to doing any of those things or being a contributor to corporate cesspool. Often times, the results produced in this […]