Jason's Blog

It's that time of year again.  The annual opportunity to plan, scheme, and build a budget.  Generally, this is the time of year when we think about what new programs or technologies we could add in the upcoming year.  We dream of slick technology or powerful new...

For those of you who have been regular readers of this blog, you know based on my last post that I'm shifting some of my time from writing to focusing on growing my business.  Thank you for the kind words from many of you in response to this post. One of the things...

On May 16, 2010, I launched this blog.  Over the past 2 years and 4 months, I've posted 220 blog posts.  In the past year, I've been committed to writing at least 3 blog posts per week.  That means I'm constantly thinking about topics to write about, trying to find an...

Can you do for others that which you have not done for yourself? This is a critical question when we think about the health of our organizations and cultures. As a leader or manager: if you aren't living up to your own potential and working in a job that is deeply...

Rarely do I share a blog post referencing a video clip or blog post without attaching some commentary on the lesson specific to leadership, talent or HR that I took away from what I am sharing.  Today, is the exception. Yesterday, in the midst of immersing myself in...

Here's a thought to consider on a Friday.  In your work with people, do you continually strive to make things simpler, or do you unwittingly make things more complex? People love simple.  It's why Google thrives and Yahoo dies.  It's why Apple is king and Blackberry...

I have a friend who started a new job recently.  She was pretty excited about the opportunity and was particularly excited about the company she was joining.  The company, while relatively small, has a reputation of being progressive and innovative within their field....

If there's one lesson my children learn from me, I want it to be that life is a series of choices.  Every moment represents a choice or a set of choices and every choice has consequences, good or bad.  There is always a choice.  Throw the toy or not.  Eat your dinner...

One of the blogs I follow that consistently provides me with new perspectives and ideas to chew on is Life in Perpetual Beta by Harold Jarache.  Harold has some great vision and ideas about how the organization is changing and what that means to how we learn and do...

It seems lately I've been referencing Dan Pink's book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us.  It is a great book that presents some powerful conclusions that should challenge our thinking about how we design work and practice leadership.  If you either...

I grew up as a country boy on a farm in rural Iowa.  I was surrounded by farming everywhere I went.  I don't know that I honestly paid a lot of attention to the business of farming growing up (other than the various unpleasant jobs I helped with during summer months...

Creating a strategy for your organization around talent starts with defining the what and how of talent for your organization.  Talent can be leveraged and managed very differently from one organization to the next.  So, one of the keys to doing effective work in...

For the past week, Joe and I have been having a discussion on the Talent Anarchy blog that was prompted by a post written by Ted Coine that you can (and should) read here.  The conversation has revolved around the merits of collecting feedback on your job performance...

Organizational fit (or cultural fit) is a topic that gets a lot of discussion, particularly in recruiting circles.  We strive to find people who will be a good fit for the organization--people who will quickly and naturally fall into the rhythm of the organization and...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel discussion about employee engagement at the Southwest Learning Summit hosted by the Dallas Chapter of ASTD (American Society for Training and Development).  The panel discussion was tuned to help training and...

The curtain has closed on the Olympics and we can now return to our regularly scheduled programming.  For two weeks I resisted writing about the Olympics.  But, before I completely close the book on the Olympics, there are a few reflections that I want to share....

Early in my career, I used to get really wrapped up in getting credit for every idea and every bit of work I did.  I desperately wanted to be recognized for my contributions and my "brilliant" ideas.  I got so angry when a manager or coworker would take "my idea" and...

Based on all the evidence I've seen both quantitatively and qualitatively, we have a real epidemic of bad management.  This may be an obvious and almost cliché thing to say.  It seems that everyone is feeling the pain.  Employees complain about lack of leadership,...

I don't remember when I first heard the phrase, "Your have to put your heart into it."  It was probably when I was a kid growing up--likely something to do with sports.  We encourage kids to throw themselves into whatever it is they are doing.  We try to teach them...

Yesterday, TLNT.com published an interesting piece about swearing (cussing, using foul language, etc.) in the workplace.  Here are the cliff's notes as I read it: half of employees say they swear at work, the other look down their nose in judgement on them for doing...

About a month ago, I bought my wife a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.  By that point, the media had me convinced that everyone woman (and some men) in America was reading this book.  A few of her close friends had been reading the book and talking to her about it, but...

What role does vulnerability play in innovation, performance, and success within our organizations and our lives? Could it be that cultivating vulnerability in ourselves and others has more power than developing talent? These are questions that are floating around in...

If you've ever seen any of the Men in Black movies, you know that the said "men in black" carry around a little device that flashes and flushes people's memories of certain events.  This is how they keep humans from remembering their encounters with aliens. I wonder,...

In talking with a friend yesterday, we stumbled into a really important question that seems pretty simple on the surface: Are you happy? Turns out, it's like the tip of an iceberg.  Harmless question on the surface it seems, but it has the mass to knock you off course...

As humans, we are really skilled at rationalizing things.  We re-write history in our heads and re-frame events to fit the version we were hoping for.  We don't do it with any ill intentions, it's just how our brain copes with the world.  We want to succeed and...

Human Resources has become the red-headed step child of the business world.  It breaks my heart, but despite the fact that our role is to facilitate the management of the organziation's most potent resource, we still aren't taken seriously in far too many...