Blog

I’m lying on my back underneath my house in central Texas repairing a copper pipe that burst during the February ’21 deep freeze. After locating the leak by pressurizing the pipes with water and finding where it cascades, like a waterfall, through the underflooring, I have removed the appropriate boards, located the burst section of pipe, and cut it out with a reciprocating saw.

I am sure you will agree that one of the most challenging tasks we have as managers and leaders is to incorporate new people into our businesses. The long-drawn-out question and answer process of interviews can be tedious and, in some cases, yield incorrect or inconclusive conclusions.

My husband and I will be celebrating our 35th anniversary this year. It's been a great adventure so far…but as you know from your own experience, every relationship comes with a unique set of challenges. So it's a good thing that we're both willing to tackle those because not only are we life and business partners, but his first language is Spanish while mine is English!

Like many of you, my wife and I enjoy watching series on one of the many available streaming services. Getting involved in a story with interesting characters that develops over time is an enjoyable distraction from life's daily challenges. While we have seen many good series over the last five years, what has become apparent to me is that even though we are sitting on the same couch in front of the same screen, we are watching different shows.

This past February, I celebrated my 70th birthday. During our family gathering, the term “New Norm” became center stage of our conversation. I observed the fact that the term “New Norm,” while absent from my previous 69 years in this world, now appears to be something that should be very important to me, judging from the number of articles on the subject.

For over 12 months now, we’ve lived with global change due to COVID-19, and we have all responded to it with the typical human response to change.

“Life is a journey, not a destination.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Heraclitus said, “There is nothing permanent except change.”

During my consulting career in corporate America, one of the services I frequently provided was the creation of a Position Portrait. This document contained a list of the behavioral skills that a person needed to be able to perform to be successful in the employment position described.

We love New Year’s Resolutions, making them, breaking them, and making fun of them (it’s the number one subject of the first Sunday comic section of the New Year). Anything but keeping them! Research suggests that about 45% of people in the United States make New Year’s resolutions and 75% of them keep them going through the first week of January (that would get you a C in school!) 46% make it six months, which is pretty impressive given that first week failure rate, but only 8% last the whole year. Not a very good showing.