I also wear glasses or contact lenses. Obviously, people can see when I wear glasses, and I was called “four eyes” as a child. Today, no one seems to care. There’s no stigma attached to wearing glasses.

But it seems some people think I should feel shame that I wear hearing aids. I’m actually proud that I’m smart enough to know that hearing aids help me, both professionally and personally. Read more.

Data gives you a ton of insight into how effectively an organization is being managed. But you must understand what the data is telling you, and then act on it, if it’s to be useful. Read more.

I’ve hired a lot people in my higher education career. Before we begin searches, we sit down and map out the recruitment plan. We include everything from who will be involved in the hiring process to where we will advertise for the position to the timetable we expect to follow. Evidently, planning all of this is not what many organizations do or if they do plan, they don’t stick to the plan. Read more.

When Mabel was asked to do the job, she learned that Jack’s salary had been $125,000. Yet Mabel was offered $85,000 to do the same job—a $23,000 pay increase for her. She was told that the lower salary was due to a COVID-19-related decline in revenue. The organization just could not afford to pay Mabel what it had paid Jack.

She asked me if I thought the lower salary was gender-related. I had no clue, as I don’t know her boss. I also don’t know how hard her organization has been hit financially by COVID. It is plausible that her supervisor is being truthful with her. It’s also possible they thought the organization could pay her less because she’s a woman.

She loves the work and wants to continue in the position, and has gotten strong hints from her supervisor that he wants her to continue. So what should she do? Read more. 

When I think of my childhood, I remember having to wait until 6 p.m. or 10 p.m. to watch the news on television to learn what was going on in the world. But now we learn about something seconds after it happens.

We once had to wait, with great anticipation, for our favorite show on Thursday night. And the cliffhangers for those shows? We had to wait an entire season to find out what happened! In the age of Netflix, we can binge watch season after season in a weekend. We don’t have to wait for many things today.

Emails are a blessing and a curse when it comes to instant gratification. Most people will tell you that, in order to manage your time well, you should block out times of the day to attend to your emails. For example, maybe you begin the day cleaning up your email box from the last time you responded. And then later in the day, you attend to them in another time block (say, 2–2:30 or at the end of the workday). I know a few people who follow this model successfully. Read more.

Managers either work sequentially or concurrently. What do I mean? I’ll use my own experiences to illustrate. Either method can work, but what is best depends on what the organization needs.

Any manager should expect a learning curve, and a honeymoon period, when they start at a new job. People will cut you slack as you figure out what your job actually is and how to most effectively do it. But after three to six months, folks expect to start seeing some action. Perhaps new initiatives begin or a tough decision is made regarding how work is done. Read more.

I’m a big fan of to-do lists. Most mornings, I generate a list of items that must be done that day. Occasionally, the list will include items that are longer term, but that need to be started soon.

Some people organize their list. Maybe they order the items by importance. Others create a list based on how much time each item will take to complete.

My list is created as I think of things to add. I do not take the time to organize it in any coherent fashion. It’s more a stream of consciousness list. I typically begin the list as soon as I get out of the shower, as I’ve usually thought of three to five things while I’m in there. Then I add to the list throughout the morning.

How do you “work” your list? Do you start with the easiest items to complete or do you tackle the hardest one first?

There is value in each method. Read more.

He said most of the people who worked on the assembly line in his plant, while sometimes bored with their work, were happy to leave the plant at the end of their shift and not have to worry about work until their next shift. They loved being able to go home in the late afternoon and coach their kids’ teams, ride bikes with the family or grill out without the chance of getting a call about something happening at work. They didn’t want to be responsible for returning to work to address a problem outside their shift. They were willing to forego the opportunity to increase their pay for the freedom to leave work behind every day. Read more.