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Showing posts from December, 2014

What's Your New Year's "Re-Solution"?

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New Year's Resolutions are most often pledges to rid our lives from nasty or unhealthy habits. A resolution is made when we choose to resolve a situation. As I started to make my list, I realized that the word "resolve" is re-solve and "resolution" is a re-solution. In other words, another try or a different solution. I like that better. It feels more like a step in the right direction rather than a self punishment or prevention. It's a new way to approach an old problem. I think in business we tend to spend too much time looking for new solutions, rather than rethinking the ones we have. Our vision gets clouded due to time constraints or pressures to perform. Many of the answers are already there in place and just need tweaking. (That's tweaking not twerking ). Sure we have budgets, and schedules, and marketing plans. But what about business resolutions? Where are they? Maybe we need to pledge to ourselves and our employees to take

The Holiday Office Party: 3 Sticky Questions to Ask Before You Go

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All ready for the holiday party: Ugly sweater? Check. Christmas tree tie with flashing lights? Check. Inappropriate behavior? Check. Wait. What? All one needs to do is watch an episode of MADMEN to learn how what we once thought was acceptable business practice is now at best horrifying, and at worst punishable by law. The business world has gotten wiser, more evolved, more sensitive but some believe the political correctness has it gone too far. Legal and its liabilities removed the libations. HR re-dubbed Christmas into Holiday. And the CFO changed the venue from cocktails at The Ritz to cocktail franks and Ritz crackers. It's often been my job to plan them, and I think most of the changes have been good for the Holiday Party (that is, if you're still lucky enough to have one). Ho, Ho, Hold on there a minute. Just because the Holiday Party is not what it used to be, people still need to check themselves before they wreck themselves . In 2014, inappropriate