Teaching New Hires Your Company’s Language

Company Language

Every company has its own language. This language consists of the company’s unique culture, processes, assumptions, and tribal-knowledge – among other things. It is this internal language that allows staff to communicate effectively and efficiently. However, this language can also be off-putting to new employees. The Danger of Not Explicitly Integrating New Employees The dangers …

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Recruitment Strategies

I’ll be honest, this can be a dry subject. However, having a solid understanding of recruitment, and being able to implement thoughtful recruitment strategies is vital to a company’s success. The following post is meant to help you understand the basic principles of recruitment and candidate selection. Understanding Recruitment Labor Demand Labor demand refers to …

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Personal Realignment

Rick’s Dilemma “I’m gonna be honest here, Rick,” Tuan began, “I just don’t know what you’re doing all day, and that’s the problem. You haven’t resolved a whole lot of tickets – only 50% of the next lowest technician. “You say that you’ve been working in your labs and trying to learn more about the …

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Navigating Trolls and Customers in Online Reviews

In this day of data-ubiquity, negative online reviews can be deadly for small and medium sized businesses. And yet there are some out there who get a perverse pleasure from posting random or undeserved negative reviews. This is especially problematic for small and medium-sized businesses who may not have the resources to combat these trolls. …

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Starting a Creative Business

Recently I’ve had the surprising and pleasant experience of providing career consulting to a few aspiring professionals. Both individuals are pursuing creative endeavors – music and photography, respectively. This work has given me the opportunity to observe the creative process at work and inspired me to share a little bit of advice to others who …

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Cultural Alignment and Leadership

alignment

Well-Meaning but Damaging Culture Dave Hatfield, the IT Manager at Blumfirth, Inc., was late to the morning team meeting. The rest of the team had been waiting patiently in the small conference room since 8AM. Some of them were chatting, others were checking email, or browsing on their phones when Dave finally burst in. “I’m …

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Risk Management for IT Leaders

Once, when I was but a wee IT Professional, I visited the company data center to perform some standard maintenance on one of the servers. In preparation, I brought over the “crash cart”. It was a standard crash cart with a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. I plugged the monitor into the rack’s (very …

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