I always end the year by writing about my accomplishments, failure, regrets and resolutions. This post is all about my biggest 2016 failure, which is funny because I started a company to help teams beat failure. People might think I don’t like to fail, and that’s just not true. In fact, I believe that it’s…
I always end the year by writing about my accomplishments, failure, regrets and resolutions. This post is all about 2016 accomplishments. If I’m being honest, I had a record-breaking year of doing things the hard way. That’s 2016 for you. Everything was a slog. But here’s one thing I started doing right: I asked for advice…
Every year, I threaten to do performance reviews on the cats. This is the year it happens. Jake, 16 Glorious man cat. • #cats #catsofinstagram #tabbylove #jake A photo posted by Laurie Ruettimann (@lruettimann) on Mar 4, 2016 at 1:52pm PST Summary: Mister Jake is in the fourth quarter of life, so the fact that…
Years ago, I wrote for a magazine called The Conference Board Review. One of my editors was Vadim Liberman, and he was the sort of boss who taught me all about logical fallacies without overtly saying, “Hey, your article is a piece of garbage and makes no sense.” In return for his excellent editing and critical…
There’s a meme going around. It looks like this: If you spend any time on the internet, we all have that one follower who likes and comments on everything. Without that follower, we’d have nobody. It’s why the meme doesn’t sit well with me. It seems condescending because that one fan probably doesn’t realize she’s…
It’s December 2001 and America has only just begun its war in Afghanistan. I’m working in a human resources department at an insurance company. I’m the HR leader for “capital development,” which is shorthand for mergers and acquisitions. I’m responsible for providing HR support to companies who are acquired by my organization. These are mostly…
About ten years ago, I began collecting Waterford Crystal’s 12 Days of Christmas champagne flutes. They issued two each year, and I was determined to own the set. I have no idea why tbh. The flutes are quite large and very ostentatious. They’re not expensive and gaudy enough for Melania Trump, but they’re too showy…
I’m picky about my music, and every song has a shelf-life with me. While there are a few songs that will always remain listenable, most music expires after I hear it more than a couple of dozen times. My feelings apply to my favorite genres: new wave, punk, and industrial. It also applies to Christmas…
It’s the time of year where HR companies push content marketing that takes one of two forms: 1. 2016 Year in Review 2. 2017 HR and Recruiting Predictions For years, I wrote these articles for my clients. Now that I’m focused on other things in my life, this work falls to other marketing professionals. And,…
It’s pretty miserable to work overtime. I know this because I’ve worked plenty of overtime in my life. In fact, I worked overtime during my summer jobs throughout school and in several of my early HR jobs. While it was okay to earn time-and-a-half for my efforts beyond my typical 40-hour workweek, I would’ve appreciated…