Stories at Work

What stories do you tell?  Do people at your work share stories about times when your founder really exemplified the values of your organization?  Do you tell stories at work about times when people really supported each other?  Are there tales about employees who thought creatively and changed the way the company does business?  Think [...]

Influencing Others–Think about the culture of your organization

When you are trying to influence others in the workplace, there’s not a one-size-fits-all formula for what to say or do.  All Things Workplace had a great post about the role of organizational culture.  That was a buzz word in the 80’s and 90’s, but most of the writing from that time was about how [...]

Positive Attitudes

Unfortunately, the page to which this post linked has been disabled.  Nevertheless, the importance of a positive attitude at work remains.

Even when things are going badly, try to have a good attitude. Expect the best until you’re proven wrong. As this post indicates, it helps in a number of intangible ways. You have the choice [...]

Dealing with New People on the Job, Part 2

In my last post, I explained how frustrating it can be for new people to hear, “this is the way we’ve always done it.”  There’s another side to that issue—there may be logical reasons why you’ve always done it this way.  Giving new people enough freedom to fail may seem like “setting them up,” but [...]

Dealing with New People on the Job, Part 1

As new people join your organization, one of the worst things they can hear is “this is the way we’ve always done it.”  New people can bring new life into worn-out routines.  Don’t let your expectations force new people to do things the way everyone else does them.  Change can be scary, but the benefits [...]

Office Friendships–How close is too close?

In one of the classes that I taught last semester, we discussed workplace friendships.  I am referring to the closer connections, rather than the coworker acquaintanceships that are often a part of jobs or the romantic relationships that are often discouraged in workplaces.  Is it ok to be close friends at work?  Several places in [...]

Cynicism and Negative Responses

Cynicism is something that you have to fight.  I’m working on a research project right now with another professor, and we have found strong effects between cynical attitudes and how you respond to difficult circumstances in your workplace.  People who are more cynical report that they are more likely to quit their jobs, neglect their [...]

Humor, Dissent, and Organizational Culture

The idea of using humor to express dissent leans heavily on sarcasm in the workplace.  I recently had a group of students write a paper arguing that sarcasm can really poison an organization’s culture, inviting cynicism and damaging relationships.  What are your experiences?  Do you agree or disagree?

Open Door Policies–How to Make Them Work

One response to the idea of managers accepting dissent might be to initiate an “open door” policy.  Yet some research implies that open door policies may often be ineffective (Harlos, 2001)—the idea that “the open door leads straight to a push out the open window.”  Harlos argued that, for open door policies to work, employees [...]

Scientific Management

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of scholars were researching how organizations could be more efficient.  One of the foremost of these scholars, Fredrick Taylor, developed a theory of “Scientific Management,” which focused on ways that employers could get the most out of their employees (Taylor, 1911).  Employees were treated in ways [...]