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If we look back into the past, historically, we as human beings farmed or hunted or traded with our parents—we toiled alongside them in the fields, went with them and carried home the game together, or helped them load up the boat with goods to go to the trading post downriver. In the manufacturing world, we both often worked together in the same factory or on the same assembly line. The question I have is, in the context of today’s economic situation, how unusual would it be for a parent and their child to be competing for the same job that may be opening up in their city. While this may seem unusual from a human or historical perspective, I think this type of scenario would not...

One of the things that I have noticed is that most leaders tend to be optimists. As I stop to reflect about this, it occurs to me that there’s a fairly simple reason for this—not many people would like to follow a negative person. So, if you aspire toward leadership, you are better off being an optimist and not a realist (as some pessimists like to dub themselves). Most leaders I know, in business as well as nonprofit and other organizations—tend to be fairly high on the optimism scale.

Watching my daughters and other people in their twenties interact, I see that the majority of these interactions take place via electronic media such as twittering, Facebook, texting and chat rooms. These individuals need to understand that there is nothing that can replace meeting people and engaging them on a one-on-one or personal basis. Remember that there is a million years worth of genetic hardwiring in us as social animals which dictates the way we interact with our peers and other human beings. Five years of social media cannot overcome a million years worth of genetic code. So no matter how much you use these media, remember that nothing beats meeting a person live, face-to-face and...

As we continue to watch our careers and tap into this absolute mushrooming of social interactive media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, one of the thoughts I had is that the vast majority of people are simply like sheep in this environment—they are followers or passive readers, who are simply watching events unfold like they would be watching a movie or a TV show. The question is, how can you use these various social interactive media to enhance your career, to improve your service if you are in the service industry, improve your sales if you are in the sales industry, or help you find a job if you are looking for one? Some of the lessons I’ve learned while observing this...

I am thrilled and proud that Kenexa has been featured in the new book on cloud computing titled “Cloud: Seven Clear Business Models” by Timothy Chou. It is available now on Amazon and Kenexa is profiled as one of the Elite Eleven, defined by the author as "the largest business software companies, who all deliver their software as a service, and who all have gone public since 2000. Based on a series of lectures at Stanford University, this book discusses cloud computing from a business perspective. It serves as an excellent, easy-to-read, introduction to cloud computing for anyone who builds, sells, purchases or invests in applications or infrastructure deliver...

There have been a lot of press clips recently about inflated compensation, especially that of bankers. A lot of these are led by the Obama administration as well as the business world in general. The most intriguing thing I find is that there’s no one group that says a particular group makes too much. It’s always hedge fund managers saying CEOs and executives make too much, CEOs and executives saying venture capitalists make too much, the VCs saying bankers make too much, bankers saying entertainers make too much and entertainers saying professional athletes make too much, and so on. (And somewhere along the way we shouldn’t leave out the doctors as well.) Every group o...

A couple of weeks ago I decided to get onto Yammer, which I thought was a rather interesting way of social networking. It’s a subset of Twitter, which I’m still not a part of, and which I’ve been debating whether or not I should join. I really enjoy the real-time dialog. A friend of mine, an analyst, said being on Yammer or Twitter is rather like riding a bus, joining a conversation when you feel like it, talking to total strangers and kind of just riding along with a friend, which I thought was a rather apt way of describing the experience. Having spent a few weeks on Yammer, I am now wondering whether joining Twitter would be a good idea. I’m not sure, though,...

The backwash of the credit crisis of late last year continues in the form of high unemployment figures, which will continue to worsen. There are a couple of points to bear in mind in the current circumstances. If you lost your house in a hurricane, it would be a major personal economic calamity, accompanied by the obvious discomfort of having to live in a public facility while you rebuilt your house. But there would be no sense of shame or loss of dignity associated with having to do this. One of the things I have noticed is that people that have lost their jobs due to resizing tend to feel ashamed, as though it were somehow their fault. The reality of the situation is that we are going thro...

Have you in the past said to yourself that you’ll never make a New Year’s resolution again, and then gone on to do exactly that? If you, like most people, made resolutions and promptly broke them or did not follow up on them, what did you learn from the exercise? One piece of learning you might gain from it is to be very careful and realistic about promises you make to yourself, especially ones that you have not thought through properly. The cycle of making a promise and breaking it tends to weaken your self-respect. You will begin to feel that you will never be able to achieve what you want to do, and this fact will eventually begin to torment you. So, before you blindly make a ...

In my last post I spoke about how we need to constantly prepare ourselves to cope with troubled times that might hit us, so that we are never caught napping. One “core exercise” that can help anyone cope with life is relationship building. The pace of life is so rapid nowadays that we get so caught up in our routines and we often tend to forget how our lives are entwined and interdependent with those of other people. At the basal level are your closest relationships, such as those with family and friends. These should be valued and nurtured, and relationship building should be an ongoing process in everyone’s lives. And in times when you are troubled, don’t let your p...