It is day 37 of lock down in my city. It’s been an adventure, to say the least. For all of us. I am, however, extremely thankful for so many things – among them that I still have a great role with an organization that inspires, supports, and is genuinely concerned for their people – and that is made up of truly remarkable folks who strongly believe in their community and the communities they serve. With the recent news from the LATimes that “Less Than Half of L.A. County Residents Still Have Jobs Amid Coronavirus Crisis” – I wake up each day truly appreciative and optimistic. Whisky-A-Go-Go T ..read more

And The Dangers of Legacy Thinking This summer I committed to my sons that they would have the a busy and fun summer and we made that happen: Surf Camp in Orange County, CA; Space Camp [their first sleep-away camp (as a mom, this week was miserable for me but a blast for them)]; Golf Camp in Austin, Texas ; Tennis Camp in NYC; Golf Camp in Chicago; A last hurrah to summer break in one of our favorite European cities. Because of our travel schedule I decided to take on a lighter work load than my usual schedule and I found myself with some extra time on my hands, which is rare for me ..read more

While the antecedents of the glaringly obvious rise in feelings of personal deservingness/entitlement are difficult to pinpoint, several factors have been proposed for this culture, including a general increase in the standard of living, proliferation of technology and the “instant gratification” such advancements often bring. Most industries are seeing a sharp rise in turnover and people ghosting their employers for several reasons. One of the reasons I hear very frequently [in the last two years especially] is that people truly believe they have mastered their role after an internship or ..read more

In just one week I have been asked to present a learning topic to a fabulous retail organization in NYC [seriously, it’s one of my favorite retailers so I am super excited]. They asked me to present 15 minutes to their creative merchant team. The attention learning span in 2018 dropped from seven minutes to six minutes in formal and informal learning environments. I have actually prepared a six minute talk to share with them to get the most out of our time together – the remainder of the time can be dialog, conversation, which is usually more valuable anyway. But this has lead me to rea ..read more

Recently, I’ve come across two profoundly interesting workplace culture and questionable leadership examples of how social media is forcing organizational transparency and working to shift the balance of power a tiny bit more in a candidate’s/employee’s favor. There is a lot of fear around speaking the truth and spotlighting the bad behavior or clearly poor executive decisions that most of us have encountered and witnessed in a lot of workplaces – regardless of industry. But there are some brave “voices” that are no longer willing to tolerate the despotic and gnarly culture too many organizati ..read more

Hooray For Curious Minds! If you’re anything like me, you were glued to the Michael Cohen congressional hearing on Wednesday. It was fascinating and salacious. It was both the most interesting and worst of today’s politics. One thing really stood out to me and it was that there were stories and situations that Mr. Cohen offered to the committee that absolutely begged for follow up questions but those questions were never asked by most of the congressional representatives. This lack of curiosity is fascinating to me and it absolutely made me recollect a few experiences I have had surfacin ..read more

Traits of Unique & Fabulous People I have always been an advocate of inviting unique personalities into the workplace. I love rebels and legitimately creative [even disruptive] individuals. I love ambition, transparency, integrity, and humor [unfortunately, these are very unique traits in most workplaces]. I love people who are authentic and honest human beings with passion, enthusiasm, and honorable intentions. I love people that are a little quirky and who go out of their way not to be like everyone else. Most of these qualities are not something that the average organizations seeks t ..read more

Professional Pedigree A few months ago I had an interesting experience with an organization who’d reached out to me for a role that was extremely exciting. I was then eliminated because my professional pedigree was – apparently – too akin to that of the backwoods locals in the movie Deliverance to be a fit for their brand. I wish I could say I stoically digested that feedback and haven’t obsessed about why I was contacted and presented as a candidate if pedigree was the singular criteria that identified the “winner” of that job opportunity. So, as things usually do for me, this kooky obsess ..read more

It is undeniable that most successful people are ambitious. Those of us who dream of more need to be intrinsically motivated to reach for more – whatever that “more” is. It is THAT intrinsic motivation that propels us to try harder, work harder, and press on after experiencing setbacks. Ambition is a great trait. It’s one of those things – along with humor, authenticity, and integrity – that I look for when aligning myself with people, both personally and professionally. It always strikes me as odd when people are offended by or frightened by this trait. People who are self-motivated are fe ..read more

I have worked with many organizations in a variety of industries over the last few years and I always carve out time to really assess the reality of the culture when I am involved in a project. One of my favorite things to do is to take the top performer in the company and the bottom performer in the company, separately, out to lunch to get their perspective of the workplace culture. It’s always interesting – and almost without exception – that the high-performer feels a greater sense of accountability and expectation placed on them from their leadership team than the worst performer ..read more