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Open Flexible Work

Eliminate Blame From the Equation

September 3, 2010
This is so powerful that this one single shift will catapult your efforts to improve everything from cost containment to business processes to personnel relations and teambuilding. From a Bang-for-the-Buck perspective, this change alone will give your life a healthy booster shot. Aside from shame...

How to Destroy Motivation, revisited: Using Shame

September 2, 2010
Unfortunately we have some very unhealthy fibers woven into the fabric of our culture—unhealthy from the perspective of untold damage with no rewards. Dating back through pre-colonial Puritan days, shame has been a large part of our culture. In a simplistic, black-and-white, childlike view, shame...

Start Up a Conversation in Your Community!

September 1, 2010
This March, we were thrilled to be part of the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility . Through the President and First Lady’s leadership, the Obama Administration launched a national conversation on how innovative workplace flexibility strategies can help support working families and – at the...

The Best-Kept Secret?

September 1, 2010
Front-line employees are the backbone of industry. Many are also parents. When a mother or father comes home from a workday, one or both make dinner, help the kids with homework, read stories at bed-time – all working parents know we have both the role of employee and parent to fulfill. The vast...

We're Not Asking for the Moon

September 1, 2010
I have a friend in the professional services sector in New York, working in one of those pressure-cooker 24/7 type of environments I wrote about recently . In fact I have a whole lot of friends in these industries. They work insane hours and are, for the most part, remunerated very well. Most of...

Recognize the Difference Between Counterfeit Power and Real Power

September 1, 2010
Recommended reading for really getting the most out of this exercise is Hanna Arendt’s essays on definitions of Power, Strength, Force, Authority, and the huge differences between them. You’ll be surprised at just how different they are. Building on the last exercise concerning conflicting/...

Back to Work? Not So Fast...

August 31, 2010
Consider a headline story in the New York Times from July 31, 1910, exactly one hundred years and one month ago: HOW LONG SHOULD A MAN’S VACATION BE? PRESIDENT TAFT SAYS EVERY ONE SHOULD HAVE THREE MONTHS. I’m not making this up. Three months! President Taft! The conservative Republican President...

But that’s impossible!

August 31, 2010
When I decided to leave my job of 25 years and move with my family to San Francisco, my husband told me he was going to talk with the Chair of his Board and resign a job he loved. I suggested an alternative. "Why don't you say, I am staying with the organization, but I'm moving to San Francisco?"...
Joan C. Williams's picture

How to Avoid the No.1 Cause of "Death" in Your Organization - the Death of Motivation

August 31, 2010
How many times have you heard the advice, “keep your eye on the ball,” or “don’t look where you don’t want to go?” In every sport that uses a ball, it’s common knowledge that a singular point of concentration— the ball—is imperative to successfully hitting that mark. What happens when two different...

Work Life Policy: Pipedream or Practical?

August 31, 2010
Ms. Winegar knows this first hand as she has had the unique opportunity of witnessing work life culture from across the globe. She dishes on her thoughts on legislation, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the vagaries of enforcement and even the daddy issue – the pipedream of paternity leave on a regular basis as you’ll watch in this week’s WorkLife Nation episode.

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