What does Culture have to do with a Job Fair?

A friend of mine once shared with me a story of leaving a job to pursue one that seemed like a great opportunity. Soon after taking the new job, she discovered the culture was a nightmare. The company owner had terrible temper and was not necessarily following appropriate guidelines for the business they were in. Needless to say, it was not a culture fit for her and she moved on to find another job. When determining your next career move, culture should definitely be a considering factor. In the next few weeks, we will be talking about culture on The

When striving for a culture of “collaboration” kills your business

We conducted a focus group about a year ago with a group of business leaders around the idea of organizational values and culture.   In this focus group, we presented seven key values, based on research that defined organizational culture.   The goal was to see what these professionals thought about these seven values in the context of a broader assessment product.  And whether this values set could predict a company’s culture in order to match candidates to cultures that align with individual the candidates’ values. Often things like this come down to semantics, but one piece of feedback where there was

Do Meetings Negatively Impact Productivity?

Last week, during a meeting with a client’s leadership team, we got on the topic of just how much time they spend each week in meetings. One of the managers told me that meetings take up about five to six hours of his day, every day! That only leaves him two hours to get his work accomplished. When I asked him to tell me about his meetings, his list went something like this: 8 AM- Meeting with team 1 to discuss issues 9 AMM- Meeting with team 2 to determine what issues from 8 AM meeting are critical 10 AM-

What to do if ICE knocks on your door…

Immigration is a hot topic whether you have an opinion on it or not.  And most people do. This isn’t a post to comment on to build or not build a wall, but to deal with the reality that immigration scrutiny is on the rise for businesses.  Are you prepared as a business leader for what that means? One reality is that it is harder to get and keep visas for those who are not U.S. citizens.  One proposed change being discussed to H1-B Visas is to limit them to only positions that have a minimum salary of $130,000 a

Using Your Heart Not Your Head

I’m pregnant. With our third child. We are beyond excited and joyful about this new life coming into existence. But when you have an 8-year-old and almost 5-year-old, you and your husband both have demanding yet rewarding careers, and you are what the doctors call old enough to be of “advanced maternal age,” you get some interesting comments when you tell people this news. Some of my favorites have been: “You know, they say women with three kids are the most stressed.” “Well, when did that happen?” (I’m not sure if they were asking about conception or the decision to