The election in America reminds me that interpersonal communication, which is an exchange of information between two or more people, is super complicated. Very few people seek to understand before they speak. We don’t ask enough questions, and we rush to declare our opinions before we even fully realize if the people around us want…
My international friends want to know what the hell is happening in my country. “Why did Hillary Clinton lose?” Well, she didn’t win the electoral college. That’s not what they’re asking. They want an analysis of what went wrong, but I’m not a big fan of post-mortems. We won’t learn anything from her campaign’s mistakes.…
I’m not obsessed with failure, but I am obsessed with project pre-mortems. The father of the modern pre-mortem is a guy named Gary Klein. He asked his clients to engage in something called prospective hindsight. Here’s how it works: Before you do anything, ask yourself — how will this fail? It’s an easy question, sure,…
The great thing about my life is that every day is different than the last. It’s also a challenge because healthy rituals are lost to travel schedules and client meetings. I have core activities in my life — food, coffee, cats, chores, writing, exercise — but that’s not enough to anchor my day. (Especially if…
For the past month, I’ve been hosting weekly chats on Twitter. They have nothing to do with HR. Each week, the audience tackles failure from a different angle. We’ve talked about “generalized failure disorder,” relationships and managing difficult people at work. The audience is expanding, and the person-to-person interaction is growing more fun and entertaining…
There’s another new HR technology conference on the scene. It’s called HR Tech World San Francisco. The company that organizes this event has a foothold in Europe. Now they’re coming to the states with a pretty stellar line-up of speakers and a desire to clean up the American HR technology conference market. You ask —…
I just spent the day learning how to tell better stories with Dr. Nick Morgan of Public Words. It’s amazing that I’ve gone this far in my career as a speaker with very limited training. I don’t know anything about the mechanics of building a great speech, and don’t get me started on my ability…
An EpiPen saved my life on Saturday night. Well, it saved me a trip to the emergency room. I have food allergies and ate something off my husband’s plate that caused an anaphylactic reaction. My lips began to tingle. My throat started to close. I struggled to breathe, and my body attempted to throw up…
My friend, Steve Browne, hates it when people descend into the “tarpit of generational discussions.” He’s right. There are too many generalizations and stereotypes that weigh down our meaningful discussions. But I’ve been blogging since February 2004, and I have at least two generations of readers who have been with me for my entire journey.…
We had a great #failchat on Monday about “Generalized Failure Disorder,” which was a fake name for being human. I took a poll at the end of the chat, and this Monday’s topic will be “relationships.” I constantly fail at maintaining and nurturing my personal and professional relationships, and I hope we can have an…
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