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March 15 is Equal Pay Day
March 15 is Equal Pay Day in the USA. The date is chosen to show how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year.
Latest
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Workers need employer-provided training and they aren’t getting it
Results from a survey of 3,600 U.S. workers conducted by MIT professor Paul Osterman in early 2020: * White workers, college-educated workers, and standard workers received more formal and informal training than non-white workers, less educated workers, and those employed on a contract or freelance basis; * Less
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February 2022 - toxic culture, boosting retention, FOMO, and employees thinking like owners
Dialogue or violence. There is no in-between
Business Communication
Communication is a process by which all parties make themselves co-responsible for the creation of a shared understanding
We are a few days into the invasion of a sovereign country by another sovereign country… and the senseless deaths that ensue. I’m not one for pronouncements but if we can learn anything from history it is this: if we don’t discuss our differences, if we don’t
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the evolution of the soul
In an exquisite case of synchrony, I happened to read this right after Vonnegut’s letter: I have always believed, always, even when I was a precocious little girl crying alone in my bed, that our purpose in this life is to experience everything we possibly can, to understand as
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Kurt Vonnegut: a simple way to learn more about what's inside you
In 2006, a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond. And his response is magnificent: I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer
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Suggestions for 2022
Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they’ll turn out. You’re curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working
Newsletter
December 2021 - Year three in review
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
Newsletter
November 2021 - on pay for performance, what makes a good manager, Oops write-ups, and team autonomy
November has been a month of challenges and surprises for me. So this will be a shorter issue. How much do you know about how your team works? On average managers either did not know or could not remember 60% of the work their teams do. In one extreme instance,
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The corporation: it's something more than the people in it
John Naughton is surprised at journalists and commentators being horrified at corporations doing despicable things. Don’t they understand that a corporations is essentially a superintelligent AI which is entirely focussed on achieving its purpose — which in the case of corporations these days is to maximise shareholder value? That’s
Newsletter
October 2021 - on hiring well, your team's weakest link, collaboration, and re-onboarding
People who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question
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You learn more and faster by writing things down
Study: participants had to learn to identify the letters of a language they did not know. The learning was prompted in one of three ways: writing by hand, typing, or watching videos. "At the end, after as many as six sessions, everyone could recognize the letters and made few