Bruce Tulgan tells the four reasons you have to fire a low performer, and the best way to get low performers to leave on their own.(requires the Flash 9 Player)
iPod Video – Download

A lot of people ask me how living in Madison is going. For those of you who don't know, I moved from New York City to Madison, WI about six months ago. I can't believe it's already been six months, because I still feel like I'm in culture shock.
It is shocking, for example, that five [...]

It used to be that finding a good paying career was the path to adult-life stability. Those days are over. What we think of as stability has to change, and how we get to that stability has to change.
Here's a summary of the new employee of today's workplace: Most will change jobs every two years. [...]

My friend Dylan sent me a warning that poetry can ruin your career.
But before I knew that, when I was a blogging beginner with no idea what to post, I posted workplace Haikus. And my career was not ruined. So here's another poem, from my friend Ben:
Employed
She just wants to be employed
for eight hours a day. She is not
interested [...]

The first summer job idea is you better get one. If you are in college, now is the time to gather experience so that you will have some idea what you want to do with your life when you get out of school. Graduating from college is a very hard transition. One way you can [...]

When you look for a job or change careers, what you're really looking for is a way to improve things in your life. But it's hard to figure out what will really make things better and what will only make things worse.
There are some things we all know: People who are in love are happier, [...]

When I was a new manager, one of the steepest learning curves I had was how to adapt my communication style for the various groups I interfaced with: Technical, creative, executive. Fortunately, I had learned from my days as an arbitrage clerk that each group of workers requires a specific type of communication, so I spent a [...]

Bruce Tulgan runs through 8 things in 2 minutes — tactics that will make you feel confident and effective as a manager.(requires the Flash 9 Player)
iPod Video – Download

Barack Obama is dissing the baby boomers. But he's doing it tactfully. So he's got a wide range of people talking about generational issues in politics, and I'm eagerly anticipating spillover into the workplace, which also needs this frank discussion.
One of the companies I founded was an online marketplace for city governments. My business [...]

It used to be your workplace identity was tied to your company. "An IBM man" is a phrase that comes to mind. Companies kept track of best practices, hot management ideas, and recent innovations in the business world.
Today our identity is separate from our company. We manage ourselves with the care that used to be [...]

Ta-da! It's my new blog design. This is a big moment for me because when I started blogging, I never dreamed that it would matter so much to me that I would actually pay to have a custom blog design.
There is an important lesson here about starting something new. Many people who have successful businesses [...]

I just want to tell you about these links. Each of them made me really happy to find. Maybe one, or all four, will make you happy:
1. How to ruin your image with your signature file.
This is a great post about the stupid fonts people use in their signature file and what those fonts mean [...]

At a point when I didn't have the money to hire an assistant, I ran an ad for an unpaid intern. I ran it on a lark, thinking I'd be lucky if anyone in the world would want to work for free.
The number of responses I received was incredible, not just in quantity, but also [...]

Between the ages of 20 and 30, most people have more than 8 jobs. This is a positive thing for a number of reasons. First of all, Daniel Gilbert, psychologist at Harvard, says that we really don't know what we'll like until we try it. So having a lot of jobs when you start your [...]

Bruce Tulgan is back. Here he talks about what to ask for and what to give when recognition is deserved and the coffers are empty.(requires the Flash 9 Player)
iPod Video – Download

One of the most dangerous ideas in the workplace today is that racism is gone. Because it's not.
Jesse Rothstein, professor of economics at Princeton University, shows the prevalance of racist thinking, even today. "Some people think racial discrimination is something that ended in 1972 or something. Some people think that segregation persists because minorities cannot [...]

When I was younger and traveled more for business, I got hit on by just about every man I traveled with. This is not uncommon among women I know.
Of course, most times it's not that bad. The guy usually looks a little silly, and the next day the girl usually feels a little more powerful [...]

Chances are half of your colleagues at work are desperate for a nap. Many adults don't get enough sleep, according to the National Sleep Foundation, the problem particularly "acute" among younger workers: one in three struggle to get out of bed each morning.
What's keeping them up at night? Not work worries. Marie Gagnon, 24, is [...]

Most of us will change careers. Most young people will change careers at least three times — after they find one, when they are thirty. So work life is really about a series of careers, and we all need to get good at the process of choosing a new career. We all need to get [...]

Here's what a bad boss is: Someone who lies, cheats, steals, or touches you after you've told him, in writing, not to. If you have one of these bosses, quit complaining and start applying for other jobs.
All other bosses aren't truly bad — you're just bad at managing them.
One of the most important parts of [...]

I know, I know, I spent a whole post ranting about how almost everyone should not be video blogging. So it's surprising to hear that I'm launching Bruce's video blog here, right?
The reason I love Bruce's video blog is that he is a great speaker, and he has great ideas, and he gets them out [...]

One of my best friends, Sharon, is a hairdresser. She is not a normal hairdresser. She's a big-shot hairdresser in Los Angeles. And one of the most important moments in my financial life was when I moved from client to friend — I started saving $100 on a haircut and $150 on color because she [...]

When someone says, "So tell me about yourself," a lot of people stumble. When you craft your answer, you have 10 million hours of information to choose from. Many people actually hate getting this question because it's so hard to zero-in on an answer.
This is an honest question. Someone wants to know about you. You [...]

Take a look at my Yahoo! Finance column for this week: 239 people rated it an average of two stars out of five. Which is an improvement, because yesterday the average was one star. Also, there are 94 comments, which can be fairly represented by the one that I copy and paste here:
"I think this [...]

Here's the structure of an interview: The interviewer asks you a lot of questions about you, figures out what you like, what you're good at, and customizes as he pitches the company and the job to you.
This structure works fine if you are not all that interested in the job. But if you go into [...]

Business 2.0 reports in it's best-of-the-year roundup: "Last May The BBC invited technology expert Guy Kewney to its studios for an interview about Apple's iTunes Music Store. But when the cameras start rolling, the BBC correspondent found herself talking to the wrong Guy – Guy Goma, a computer technician who was waiting in the lobby for a [...]