I wish I didn't love watching Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican convention so much. I love her hair. I love her outfit. I love that she is a great speaker even without a lot of time to train for the convention. I love her sort-of-Wisconsin accent that I sort-of hear myself getting the longer [...]

Do you remember the Y2K hoopla? It was a five-year buildup of massively over-hiring COBOL programmers to take care of the impending doom of computers not being able to handle the new millennium. People worried the switch from 19xx to 20xx would crash computers far and wide and we wouldn't be able to do essential [...]

When I discovered Deloitte has someone in charge of figuring out how to recruit and retain the new workforce, I knew I had to talk with him. It's Stan Smith, and his title is Director of Next Generation Initiatives. I was amazed to hear how forward thinking he is in an industry known for being [...]

I just spent two days at TAI Resources getting speaking coaching. I was pissy about it the whole week before. I decided I didn't have time to go. I mean, two full days away from the kids costs about ten thousand dollars when you add up the babysitter and the Happy Meals and the ten [...]

Recently, Wellpoint dismissed its CFO, David Colby. Wellpoint cites personal reasons. The LA Times tells us that it's the numerous mistresses he was leading supposedly exclusive relationships with. The problem here is not that executives cheat on their wives. They do it all the time. What we can take from the Wellpoint dismissal is that [...]

Think twice before you ask for that promotion. What are you asking for, really? The average salary increase is less than 4%. This amount of money is not going to change your life in any notable way. Instead, ask for something that will change your life, like training, or a plum project that will broaden your skills.
Even [...]

People often tell me that I should answer more questions from readers. I do actually answer a lot of questions, but I don't put them in a Q&A format. People say they like the Q&A format. But I don't believe people like it as much as they say they do. 
I confess, however, to really liking Dan Savage's [...]

Climbing to the top of corporate America requires near complete abnegation of one's personal life, not in a sacrificial way, but in a child-like way. In most cases, when there are children, there is a wife at home taking care of the executive's life in the same way she takes care of the children's lives.
This [...]

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 [...]

A lot of you know you'd like to be doing something more significant for your company, but no one is giving you the chance. This is your wake up call. You don't need to wait for someone to bestow a title on you — you can take on a bigger role right now.
The key to [...]

Most of my girlfriends who make more than $100K a year were cheerleaders in school. We are from all over the United States. We are from all different types of companies. Only a few of us can do the splits. Yet we all bounced in short skirts and cheered for boys.
I chalked this up to [...]

What do you do with your ideas? How do you get them traction? It used to be you made a sales pitch - to venture capitalists, to customers, to your boss.
But today young people are deconstructing the sales pitch - paring it down to its core information and parodying the BS that surrounds it.
The nail [...]

On my last post, where the comments are especially good, Diana wrote that delegating has always been hard for her and she asked how a manager can overcome the following problem: "If the people I was managing didn't know what I was doing that was more important than what I was delegating for them to [...]

There are lots of rules for running a good meeting – always have an agenda, start on time, make sure no one is hungry. But this rule is more important than all others: Be a cheerleader for your objectives. When you run a meeting you have an objective and you are trying to convince everyone [...]

Here's a new word for the workplace: Rankism. File it in your brain next to racism and sexism. And brace yourself for a big change at the office, because rankism is another kind of discrimination we should not tolerate.
What's rankism, or rankist behavior? It is hiring an intern and ignoring her all summer. Or pointlessly [...]

The idea of having a perfect online identity is not realistic. Instead, maybe you should focus on making your offline identity one that you're proud of.
First of all, no one is getting away with anything online. Today recruiters are expert and tireless Internet researchers when it comes to scoping out candidates. I just read a [...]

One of the best ways to get what you want is to be an extraordinary performer at work. Stars get more training, more mentoring, better projects and greater flexibility. Fortunately, you don't need the perfect job situation in order to be a star, because most star qualities come from you – from taking your basically [...]

You do not deserve a raise just because you have been doing your job well for x amount of months. It is your job to do your job well. That's why you were hired.
Also, do not complain about your salary not being at market rate six months after you take your job. Because if you [...]

I am doing research about women in sports, and one of the most memorable statistics I have come across is that nearly four out of five women executives played sports growing up. So I called Jennifer Crispen, to talk about her work in this field. She said that there has been a lot of research [...]

People with good social skills can get along with almost anyone, and if you want to be successful in your career, you have to make people like you: Figure out what matters to them, what makes them tick, and then speak to that when you interact.
The key to being likeable is to be able to [...]