There are usually only two options for a career. Work for someone else or start a business, right? Nobody ever tells you about the third option - I was surprised that I didn't know until recently, even though I spent four years studying business in college.
Read MoreDo you really need to work in the office every day? Technology has allowed us so much freedom and flexibility in our working styles, but do we really take advantage of it? Here are 10 reasons why you should ask your employer to work from home (or a coworking space) one day per week.
Read More‘Can I have more money?' is one way to start the conversation, although not a very elegant one. Perhaps a more structured conversation would work better?
In my experience, employers are often open to giving their staff more money or a promotion, but not without good reason. For example, asking for a salary raise for doing the same work probably won’t yield you much success, however, offering to help the organisation 1. Solve a significant problem or 2. Make more money, will provide you with much more leverage. Also, keep in mind that the more you necessary you are to the business, the more inclined they will be to keep you happy at work compared to if you can be replaced easily by someone else who has similar skills.
Read MoreIt’s better you hear it now than in ten years, or realistically speaking - five years. Many people have already been forced out of a job because they’re too expensive to employ and slower than a machine. It’s happening now more than ever but this isn’t a new phenomenon. Since the 70’s robots have been widespread, with the earliest known standardised industrial robot created in 1937. Nowadays robots are becoming household items, helping with everything from cleaning, lighting and heating to monitoring the garage door and making coffee. The changes are gradual and sometimes unnoticeable, but very real.
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” Warren G. Bennis, University of Southern California, Professor of Business Administration
Read MoreIf you get a chance, there's a top podcast by the Harvard Business Review on the 4 Behaviours of Top-Performing CEOs. You would be forgiven for thinking that CEOs are the most well educated, business-savvy, mistake-free people in the corporate world, but you'd be wrong.
[There's] almost an equal amount of CEOs who graduated from Ivy League school undergraduate (degrees) as there were who didn't actually graduate from college at all.
- Elena Botelho, co-author of the article “What Sets Successful CEOs Apart”.
Read MoreStarting a business is a great idea - IF you know what you're doing. But it's not a good idea to work for yourself just because you've decided that you hate your job. Sounds obvious I'm sure, but many people still do it. If you do decide that you're going to take the leap, please keep these points in mind:
Read MoreAre you familiar with the daily bombardment of email, text, instant chat and social media while trying to get real work done? Don’t worry, Jason Fried, the CEO of base camp, has some tips for us all, especially those who work in small team environments and want to find better ways to concentrate. I picked up these lessons from the Harvard Business Review podcast, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in business or organisational psychology.
Read MoreStrategic visions, strategic plans and strategic goals all look and sound great, but what actually comes of them? According to research carried out by the authors of the book '4 Disciplines of Execution' only 15% of employees actually understood the strategic goals of the company. In other words, only 15% of employees knew the meaning of their work. Naturally, this begs the question: 'how could they expect to achieve the goal or feel good about it if they don't know what it is?'.
Read MoreToo many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. – Will Rogers
Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but a bad master. – Alexander Dumas
Money can’t buy happiness, but neither can poverty. – Leo Rosten
It's nonsense to say money doesn't buy happiness, but people exaggerate the extent to which more money can buy more happiness. - Daniel Kahneman
Read MoreProject Oxygen, a research study undertaken by the tech giant Google, collected over 10,000 pieces of data about managers — across more than 100 variables, from performance reviews to feedback surveys. They found that a good manager has 8 specific traits:
Is it optimal to have a team of high performers working together? Does the team need to be good friends? What are the two things that cohesive teams do? What is the number one factor that determines a team's effectiveness?
Read MoreDelete the social media apps - turn off the notifications.
Forget the continuous news - it's not a true reflection anyway.
Put the phone out of the bedroom - buy an alarm clock.
Look up and listen - it's 'LIVE' right now.
Enjoy the moment - it'll be gone soon.
Read MoreI’m at a crossroads in my career, what should I do?
Identify the problem with your current role, and seek to solve that first.
I have a lot of self-doubt in my abilities. How to I improve my confidence?
Make sure to do some Victory Stacking. Also, check out these tips that you can implement for free.
Read MoreVideos, news articles, social media, emails and phones are all common distractions throughout our workday. How many of them are work related compared to just communicating about work? I'm writing about this not because I can do this perfectly myself, but because it’s something I’m focusing on improving. Deep Work, a book by Cal Newport...
Read More“Do you know what Google did?”.
You’ve heard it said before as if it’s describing some game-changing business strategy that nobody else thought of at the time. The reality was much different with a myriad of complicated factors involved, many of which were totally unpredictable. Apple is the other classic story that is presented as inevitably successful, after the fact of course. In reality, many occurrences were entirely dependent on fate, not faith - as Apple commentators would have you believe. The problem with the real success stories is that they are complicated to understand, not quite as inspiring, and seemingly impossible to reproduce.
Read MorePeople engage in office politics because they think it will lead to better career prospects for them in the future. They align themselves to influencers, which by default means they will also be distancing themselves from others in the organisation. But who is actually influential? Sometimes we know, but sometimes we don’t. Lots of companies will have hidden influencers that employees aren’t aware of. This could be the receptionist or the security staff, the canteen manager or the IT administrator.
Read More'Managing out' refers to when management makes an employee's working life so unpleasant, the employee decides to hand in their notice. Some employees aren't aware that this is a management tactic, even though they may be the victim of it.
It's quite difficult to legally sack a worker if the management of a company is unhappy with them; that's why they have to use covert strategies to make life unpleasant for the individual. This process could include: criticising an employee's work repeatedly and never giving them credit; not supporting them in learning or developing; keeping them out of communication loops; ignoring their requests or making their life at the company difficult in general.
Now, let's think about what it's like for both parties involved.
Read MoreDo you ever feel like you can't do something? Or that you don't have the skills? Most people do.
It's easy to fall for the idea that you don't know how to do something, even if it seems entirely different from everything else you've ever done.
The content could be different, but the process is often the same. In other words, the 'what' may be different, but the 'how' is often similar. That's where transferable skills come into play.
Read MoreIn his book published in 1969, Laurence Peter proposes the Peter Principle: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
Many promotion decisions are beyond logic, such as promoting an engineer to a manager because they are an excellent engineer. The decision is made based on the employee’s performance in an engineering role, but engineering and management are completely different sets of skills and should be treated as such.
Read MoreOccasionally a client will come to me who doesn’t experience enough professional growth in their career. There are a couple of possible solutions for this depending on the situation.
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