Culture

Today, in the United States some four out of every five individuals age 5 and older have some type of cell phone.  And, most of these have sufficient functionality to be called smartphones.  This is in stark contrast to the time when I was growing up in a small rural southeast Texas town.  Then and […]

Steven Westlund is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading.  He is the Director of Enterprise Applications Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.  His essay first appeared as a leadership program reflection earlier this year.  [Steve may be reached at [email protected].]   A few weekends ago, my wife and I watched Alexandra Dean’s documentary, Bombshell: the Hedy Lamarr […]

… When Hiring Staff Last week’s Tuesday Reading focused on cognitive biases, forces that can influence an “individual’s personal construction of his or her social reality.” This personal construction and not the objective input received from your senses may dictate your behavior in the social world.  As a result, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual […]

… my team is a safe place for interpersonal risk taking   Early this decade Google was focused on building the perfect team.  Even earlier, the company had endeavored to capture large quantities of data about employees and how they worked.  They knew, for example, how frequently particular people ate together (more productive people had larger […]

… men and women can both be “victims” and “perpetrators”   Turn on the radio or television, read a magazine or newspaper, surf the web.  You’ll likely hear or see a story about sexual harassment or assault or mischief on the part of someone in power – a broadcast personage, a media executive, a politician, […]

Brian McDonald is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading. He is the president of MOR Associates an organization he founded in 1983 based on the belief that many organizations do not maximize the contribution most people want to make at work. More recently, he has led the development of the MOR family of leadership programs.   During […]

… Your Path to a Successful Day   The January 16th Tuesday Reading, Leveraging Practices, by Brian McDonald introduced the concept of a practice – “a bridge to help individuals travel from having aspirations to become better, to actually developing the new skills and behaviors to enable her or him to be more effective.  Practices are the […]

… the practice of being alone with your thoughts   When we think of solitude, if indeed we ever turn to that subject, we may be apprehensive and cringe at the thought of being alone and the silence that implies.  Researchers have noted that most people would prefer to do just about anything rather than […]

… to Enhance Your Leadership  Brian McDonald is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading.  He is the president of MOR Associates an organization he founded in 1983 based on the belief that many organizations do not maximize the contribution most people want to make at work.  More recently, he has led the development of the […]

… you (we all) need one Marty Jordan, human resources consultant at Linkage, Inc., tells us that “we are a society obsessed with activity and view inactivity as being lazy.”  She goes on to note that “We’re conditioned to be overworked and to believe that if, at any point, we aren’t doing something that resembles […]