Making it Work

Dear Blog,

I miss you and I want you back.  It isn’t that I abandoned you but with all the competition for my attention, you sort of slid to the bottom of the list.  Really, it was that last SHRM webcast – the requests for the CHI Indicators Workbook and RBA Business Solution at No Cost are still coming in at a fast pace.  Well, that, and the OnRec thing, and the rounds of early holiday parties. The only good thing I can say is I did leave you with good company – that picture of all those cool folks from Montana.  And at least I wasn’t out flirting with other blogs.  Or worse.  (You don’t have to worry about that.  I can’t even swing a golf club.)

Love,

Dr. Janice

Ok, now that that’s over, let’s just catch up on our relationship.

I guess, like other close relationships, this one has evolved over the years.  It used to be that every thought got turned into words – words that got shared.  In any relationship, being remiss in the day-to-day catch-up conversation creates a lag or gap – one that can easily get filled in with misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

That’s true of work relationships too.  After all, you probably spend more time with the people you work with than you do with your own family.

That’s why the TGI tagline is ‘Making the Workplace a Better Place to Work’.  Because we secretly believe that when people have a better workplace, they’ll carry their satisfaction (instead of their troubles) home.  And when there are fewer misunderstandings and misinterpretations in the workplace, so it will be in every other place people go.  And that will make the world a better place for everyone.

Singing in Three Parts, Harmony Optional

When I was very young and singing in the school chorus, we were divided into soprano and alto and taught some simple harmonies.  (This wasn’t a girls-only school.  We were so young that even the biggest boys were still high-pitched.)  I was entranced by the sound, the theory, and the math involved in this, counting up and down the scale to get a third and a fifth and so on.   What I wanted to do, more than anything else, was be able to sing in more than one voice, all by myself.  I couldn’t do it.

Now, through the wonders of technology, I have more than one voice.  I am not sure how they harmonize; that is left to the audience to decide.  These voices – there are three – can’t actually be created simultaneously, but they can be produced at pretty much the same time.  This blog became my voice two years ago.  It is now joined by two others, which can be accessed with the links in the right column here.

The first, CEO2CEO, debuted July 21, 2009.  It’s me, CEO, speaking to other CEOs.  But you don’t have to be a CEO to read it or comment on an entry.  Believe me, CEOs need all the input they can get from people who aren’t CEOs.  It keeps us from believing our own press.  (In fact, the latest post is about why we really need people who don’t ‘yes’ us into inaction and anti-creativity.)

The second, Tools4Careers, debuted August 1, 2009.  It’s me, survivor of more bad-fit jobs than anyone else I know, talking about careers.  It will probably have more actionable advice than anything else.  Between the dismal unemployment rate and the wretched ‘employed but miserable’ rate, I’m hoping to hit a few right notes that inspire people to find their fit.

And I’m hoping you’ll bring your guitar, your kazoo, a pot and spoon to bang it with – and, of course, your voice – and add to the harmony.  It’s always better with a chorus!

The Value of Resolutions Made Public

I completely forgot about the resolution I made last year (December 2, 2007 to be exact – why wait for the New Year’s rush?) to write the magnum opus.  It must have been simmering on the back burner as the thousand and one priorities got in the way because as the year wore on Jack and I returned to working through details.  We even submitted a proposal a couple of weeks ago.  Now, with two days to go before year’s end, it is almost complete.

Did it happen because of the resolution?  Or despite it?

Human nature being what it is, we are so often our own worst enemy.  We refuse to listen to reason, choking off the wisdom of our own inner voice.  We take our hard-won power and toss it away like trash.  And we fight our most positive impulses with a hodge-podge of anxiety, conflict and confusion.

I’d like to think I did it because I promised you I would and I like to keep my word.  So I’ll give you this one for 2009.  Words.  I’ll be back with a lot more of them.

Making a List!

I’ve never applied to be on a list.  You know, the ones that ask you what you’ve done and why you should be one of the 30 under 30 or 40 under 40 or people to watch in <insert name of city>.  So I was surprised to get a Google Alert telling me that I’m on this list: WE Magazine’s 101 Women Bloggers to Watch Fall 2008!

How cool is that?

So now I’m off to make a list of things I’ve been meaning to blog about!

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

This blog is one year old today.  It deserves some recognition and a bit of celebration, if for nothing else other than surviving and growing.  Not much different than a human being.

People used to have shorter life spans, primarily because infant death was so prevalent.  Now it’s blogs that don’t last.  I don’t know how many abandoned blogs dot the blogosphere but a quick search yielded someone making money from ads on abandoned blogs, which sounds to me like putting orphans out to beg, a la Oliver Twist.  The one piece of data I found measured blog life by any activity in the past 90 days (like a post).  They gave the chance of survival at 50/50.

Survival is an organism’s first expression of power.  It’s power that motivates me more than anything else – the power to make change for the better – so no wonder this mini-obsession with blog survival.

Having gotten through this first year with entries on leadership, including the political and economic, I plan to celebrate this blog’s “terrible twos” by talking about motivation in action – people at work. I’m going to start with the full disclosure of how to measure Quality of Hire using the universal metric.

It seems like the right gift to give a blog.