How to Deal with the Manager from Hell. Earth, it seems, is populated with denizens from Hell. Dramatic, not? Words have become cheap. “From Hell.” “The Devil himself.” That balding little guy in the corner office, sporting an old-fashioned tie…
There’s Peggy Olsen, portrayed by Elisabeth Moss, up front and centre in a still from TV’s Mad Men. Were you one of the actors in the background, one of the uncredited workers who helped make everything seem more realistic? If…
Leadership courses and seminars are absurd inventions of the corporate age. Seriously, for crying out loud, what exactly were these people doing before they signed up for a three-day “transformation” in a hotel ballroom? The brutal truth is that there…
Where was the wholesale leadership bargain-bin? I must’ve missed that sale. Online groups churn out motivational fluff, polished “gotcha” moments, sanitized wisdom for leaders. But where are the minions? Maybe I haven’t stumbled across the underground posts for the people…
His temples were a mass of bulging veins, merging with the deep furrows of his perennial frown. Corporal Rockjaw couldn’t break us. Platoon 4 prevailed. I was a conscript, choosing service over jail for non-compliance. Rockjaw was so tough, you…
I remember the immediate aftermath, there on the highway. We got sandwiched between other cars during a mid-morning accident. My wife and I were fine, but our little car wasn’t. The bodywork looked OK-ish from the outside, but logic told…
You ask, what’s the point? Why carry on, why do people carry on? That is 100% legit, because that’s what you feel. It’s no surprise you aren’t the only one. Experiencing futility, existential angst, among other things becomes one of…
Every messiah has to die. I watched a new managerial god fly in, and while the wrapped coupe was cooling in the basement, he gathered the middle-management saints, who in turn assembled the sinners. Together, they would transform stale tickets…
“Eighteen.” Vincent Furnier, aka Alice Cooper, was 23 when that song hit big in late 1970. It captures that messy threshold: no longer a kid, not yet a grown-up. The singer drifts between worlds, unsure who he is, unsure where…
The language of conscription is glossed over with words like duty, service, honor, and sacrifice, but beneath the shine, it stinks of rotten bureaucracy, drafting people into the meat grinder. Politicians say, “the nation calls,” but never admit to coercion.…