We finally got a dog. Sparky. His original name was Prince. But I decided you can’t have a prince on a farm. So we changed the name. Sparky is five years old, so he was probably pretty used to the name Prince, but name changing, is of course, normal in our family. (After all, I'm [...]

I think the next decade will be about trust. This is the only decade in history that will be formed wholly by Gen X—we are so small that our age of power is brief. But research from sources like Tammy's Erikson's book, What's Next Gen X?, shows that the most pronounced traits of Gen X are [...]

When I was in high school, the police took me out of my parents’ house and put me at my grandma’s house. (Here’s the story.)
My grandma spent a lot of time telling me I was special. That’s exactly how she’d say it: “You’re special.” And I used to think she was lying, saying that to make [...]

The All-Star Rodeo Challenge came to Madison, WI last weekend, and the farmer took me and my kids. I was not thrilled about going, but I try to be open-minded when it comes to stuff that is new to me that I am not ever wishing I will get a chance to experience.
I asked the farmer [...]

People talk about leadership like it’s a business crisis, and the exit of the baby boomers leaves a huge gap, and there are no aspiring leaders in the younger workforce.
But what we have is actually a semantic problem rather than a leadership problem. The issue is that in the age of the Internet, what it means [...]

We reorganized the company today. We brought in a new, interim CEO, who’s not me. For many entrepreneurs, that is their worst nightmare.
But I couldn’t be happier. For one thing, it’s a sign that my company, Brazen Careerist, is doing well. Remember when the company was running out of money and my electricity was getting [...]

What I'm listening to right now: Amanda Blank. Here's a song to play when you're not at work.
Amanda is a white-girl rapper, darling of the hipsters, and hot-girl candy for the intelligentsia. Right up my alley, right? My favorite line so far is "My rhymes are painful and fresh/My p*ssy's tastin' the best."
Today, Ryan Healy [...]

A good manager is someone who makes everyone feel like he or she is creative in their work. Because creative work is the most fulfilling work, and we are each capable of that kind of work.
My favorite research on this topic is from John Mirowsky, professor of sociology at University of Texas, Austin.
Mirowsky finds that [...]

It’s great fun to track trends to try to figure out what the future holds. The Generation after Gen Y is a mystery. Sort of. There are some things we know. And what we know, we know doesn’t change much. For example, people thought Gen Y’s sunny optimism would die down under the ardors of [...]

The Institute of Social and Economic Research recently published a study about the connection between popularity in high school and earning power later in life. New York magazine, information source to the rich and popular, summarized the study like this: "This study may seem to burst our Revenge of the Nerds fantasies, but it's logical [...]

I do a lot of public speaking, mostly on the topic of how to bridge generational differences in the workplace. And I field tons of questions from corporate audiences. Here are four of the most common questions:
How can you tell if a member of Gen Y hates his or her boss?
You can’t. This is a [...]

Generation Y has a lot of great traits, but classic, top-down leadership is not one of them. This is not a surprise: Because gen Y is the great teamwork generation. They did book reports in teams, they went to prom in teams, and they are notorious for quitting jobs in teams.
I know this first hand. [...]

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 [...]

There are a lot of rules for first-time managers. For example, never hold a meeting without an agenda, because if you don't know what you're going to do there, then no one else will know what you're doing, either. But the rule about agendas is a great example, because, like most rules for good [...]

Since today's job market is employee-driven, many candidates are fielding more than one or two offers at a time, and at this point, maybe it's the employers who need the advice on how to attract the employees, instead of the other way around.
There is lots of chatter about how resumes are on their way out. [...]

We all know that we need to be good at delegating in order to have any traction in our careers. We need to be able to learn how to do something and then teach someone else how to do it, so that we can move on and learn how to do something new. This is [...]

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 [...]

By Ryan Healy – As much as I enjoy the company of my supervisors and consider many of them my friends, we still work in a professional environment and they are a step above me on the food chain. So I watch what comes out of my mouth around higher level co-workers, but [...]

By Ryan Healy – According to adults the world works in a centralized, hierarchical structure and that's the way it will always be. They say young people will eventually adapt and accept things for how they are, despite the fact that decentralized websites and organizations have defined our childhood and early adult years.
I don't [...]

After a week of posts about generational conflict, you'll be happy to hear that Alexandra Levit is a professional bridge builder (and blogger at Water Cooler Wisdom). Leaders in the Fortune 500 call her when they can't cope with young people anymore. She teaches people how to stop annoying each other by gaining a better understanding of generational differences.
Deloitte has a [...]