Blog posts on career

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Employee Ownership

  I have always liked the idea of employee ownership. To me this can be a great help in creating a system where employees, owners, customers, suppliers work together. Alone an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) does little. But as part of a system of management it is something I think can be beneficial.

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• Your Online Presence

  For certain jobs the need for an online presence is not as critical, however, knowledge workers can really help out their prospects with a good online presence. Creating such a presence can be a big task or it can be a fairly simple site with a few articles with your ideas on topics that interest you. Creating your own blog can also be an effective strategy. Guest blog posts on another blog can also be useful.

  Your own web sitee that can serve as the long term address is a very good idea... Then you can link to various efforts (guest posts on blogs, articles at various sites, podcasts…).

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• Advice for Managers Who are Just Starting Out

  Read the Leader’s Handbook by Peter Scholtes and use it as a reference to guide your actions on a weekly basis.

  Learn to experiment and iterate quickly. Your main aim should be to manage the management system (which may mean the management practices used within your scope of authority or influence). As you start it will involve a significant amount of managing projects, to demonstrate your ability to deliver results, but that should be used to transition to building a strong management system.

  In conjunction with quick iteration and adoption of improvements your focus should be on coaching people to help them be more effective (among other things on helping them learn how to effectively practice evidenced based decision making and continual improvement).

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• Personal Finance Considerations for Going into Debt for Education

  I think taking on debt for education is a sensible financial decision. But the level of the debt that is sensible must be considered.

  When I went to college (too long ago) it was expensive, but not nearly as expensive as it is now (in the USA at least – I am not as familiar with the costs outside the USA other than knowing in many places that university education costs are very reasonable).

  I don’t have any hard cutoff where I think taking on debt no longer makes sense. But I do think I would include cost as a major factor when deciding what college to attend if I were facing that decision today.

  ...

  As I have said before the reason to chose a career is because that is the work you love, but in choosing between several possible careers it may be sensible to consider the likely economic results. And in choosing how much to spend on your education considering your future earnings is wise.

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• People are Our Most Important Asset

  ideally the organization would be providing all employees excellent coaching opportunities, all employees would be paid more than fairly, all employees would have the opportunity to develop along their desired plan, all employees would have great leadership, all employees would not be subject to continually annoyance of management system failures, all employees could count on the support of the system when needed…

  But in organizations that I have worked for we are have not reached that point. So while working to move the organization closer and closer to that goal, I believe making some extra effort to focus on those people that are helping move the organization in that direction. But it is risky if done without an understanding of systems, variation, psychology, etc.  Providing extra coaching, advice and attempting to protect people from the management failures you can’t get fixed seem like pretty safe methods.

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• The Joy of Work

  We spend much of our life at work: we deserve to have pride in what we do and even enjoy it (shocking I know). Read the respect for people posts for some ideas on how to make your workplace better.

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• New Health Care Insurance Subsidies in the USA

  Under the new law, nobody will have to pay more than 8.5% of their income on health insurance. The government will also pick up 100% of COBRA premiums through September. COBRA is health insurance for people who’ve lost their jobs.

  The Kaiser Family Foundation calculator lets you get a quick idea of what your approximate subsidy benefit. A 55 year old earning $55,000 would be entitled to a subsidy of $4,700 about 50% of their health insurance costs (based on the USA average). For a 50 year old the subsidy would be $2,900 or 38%. For a 60 year old the subsidy would be $6,800 or 59%. For a couple of 35 year olds and 2 children the subsidy would be $12,100 per year or 72%.

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• Creating an Integrated Life Where Work Adds to Life

  ... I realize doing this to the extent he did is very difficult. But growing up with it I learned that the idea that you could design the whole life (including everything) to maximize life.  And that it may well be that extra effort at work rather than detracting from the rest of life enhances it. For me the key is to focus on maximizing the whole and within that realizing sometimes there are tradeoff (essentially a zero sum game) but there may well be times when you can design the system of your life to find win win solutions.

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• The Lazy Unreasonable Man

  My view of myself places me in both of these camps (lazy and unreasonable). But, honestly, I have become more reasonable over time and while it makes me less difficult to put up with I think I am less effective...

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• Joy in Work – Software Development

  Software programmers are more likely to really enjoy what they do. There are many reasons for this not the least of which is that they have a fair amount of control over their careers. If they don’t like what they are asked to do, the tools they are asked to work with… they will (more than others) leave for another job.

  Some managers get frustrated that such people are not willing to put up with the normal bother everyone else seems willing to accept (programmers are often “unreasonable”). But I see an occupation that is more focused on joy in work than most. And creating joy in work is what managers should be worrying about – not getting troublemakers to fall into line.

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• The Growing Use of Apprenticeships in the USA

  Apprenticeships are a great option for many people. For one thing you don’t have to take on a huge debt burden (previous post: Personal Finance Considerations for Going into Debt for Education). Also for many careers and apprenticeship is what is needed, not a college degree.

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• A Powerful Tool: The Capacity Matrix

  The basic idea of the capacity matrix is to track your capability for each concept:

  1. awareness (information) – I am aware of this idea and can recall pertinent details as needed.
  2. knowledge (understanding and comprehension) – I can explain this idea or theory. I can translate the idea into my own words. I can make an example to explain the idea and demonstrate learning.
  3. know-how (analysis and application)...
  4. mastery (judgement and evaluation)...

  ...

  It seems to me that obviously such a manner of matching potential employees to the needs of the organization is a huge improvement upon current methods...

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• Internships Increasing

  The Deming Scholars MBA program at Fordham includes a heavy dose of internships (“Subject matter is delivered in five integrated learning cycles. Five eight-week sessions of classroom lectures, seminars and study are linked by seven-week internships at participating firms”). Sadly the Deming Scholars MBA program has closed.

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• Keeping Good Employees

  ...What can we do to keep you? What do you enjoy about your job? What do you dislike? What can I do to increase your joy in work? What one thing would you most like to see changed? What do you want to see continue? Would you like help in some aspect of your career development? What can I do better? Am I providing too much oversight, not enough?

  Give honest straight forward answers to questions. If someone wants to move ahead and needs to work harder to advance their career tell them that. If they need to be more cooperative, develop certain skills… tell them. The idea is not just to make the person happy in that meeting...

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