Leadership, teamwork, democratic workplace
The self-help industry has a new term: Mattering. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal addresses that less-than-loving feeling once you are turned out to pasture: “The Retirement Crisis No One Warns You About: Mattering: … How to continue to feel seen and valued.” It brings to mind a previous essay of mine, “Nobody…
A few years back, I made up a term for a kind of management system or style: cage free. It was a re-purposing of a term found on an egg carton. As you know nowadays there’s more than one way, including “gluten-free”, to market eggs. (There’s no gluten** in eggs.) And, claiming eggs are organic suggests something…
I’ve written of roosters and wild turkeys to illustrate human behavior, especially in the workplace. While humans display compassion more than most in the animal kingdom, there are times when we are less than compassionate in how we treat the less able or the strange. I have another story. This one is about how a…
How a primal craft moved one leader from a world of invoices, inventories, and interruptions to a state in which simple satisfaction came through the act of shaping raw dough into a loaf of bread. I make my own bread, something I’ve been doing for many years. My sourdough “starter” comes from Oklahoma, the gift…
A benefit for me, besides entertainment, of reading fiction is that authors describe situations which may be familiar to us but ones we have failed to articulate. The writer puts into words the ineffable in our lives, those interactions that leave us puzzled or wondering “What was that about? Here are two examples, both from…
“NOW it happens that in America a man who goes up hanging to a Balloon is a Professor. One day a Professor, preparing to make a Grand Ascension, was sorely pestered by Spectators of the Yellow-Hammer Variety, who fell over the Stay-Ropes or crowded up close to the Balloon to ask Fool Questions. They wanted to…
The word, bumptious, has found recent currency, mostly in political discourse, but the Trumpian allusion is not what I’ve in mind. Nor will this be a plea for others, always others, to be kinder and more considerate. Rather, I’ll explore the seeming lack of courtesy (rudeness) which is central to being bumptious. What promotes rudeness?…
While reading Senator John Kennedy’s book, “How to Test Negative for Stupid” (2025) I harked back to Bierce’s biting commentary on American politicians. Bierce had no use for fools, so he would have been delighted to meet Mr. Kennedy, an Oxford graduate, a native of Louisiana and a top notch lawyer. Mr. Kennedy tells, in…
Recently, I blogged that the “Glue Player” (GP) or Glue Guy (GG) is a new management phrase derived from basketball and baseball. The term describes someone in a team “who holds everything together, often without seeking recognition for their efforts.” GPs have other attributes: they “lead from behind.” They let the stars shine while making…
A Bear, a Fox, and an Opossum were attacked by an inundation. “Death loves a coward,” said the Bear, and went forward to fight the flood. “What a fool!” said the Fox. “I know a trick worth two of that.” And he slipped into a hollow stump. “There are malevolent forces,” said the Opossum,…