Culture

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    Linked: Actions of a good boss turning into a bad boss

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    It’s true. Our words and actions, especially when things are stressful, undermine what we think we are. You may think you’re being a good boss, and maybe most of the time you are, but those days when you’re stressed and short with people or the days you decide to not deal with a problem, become the days that define you in the eyes of the people who report to you.

    To them, you aren’t just another person having a bad day. You are the person who controls their success at this company for better or worse, so it’s not just you having a bad day, it’s the organization having a bad day, directed at them.

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    Linked: What If We Just Stopped Being So Available?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    This is really the thing. We all know that our devices are with us all the time, and we all know that everyone else knows. So when the notification pops up, there’s an instantaneous thought process that we all go through.

    And no, it’s not is this important or can it wait? The actual thought process is “they know I see this and are probably expecting a response”

    However the article below also points out that much of the time, that’s isn’t true. Someone was just reaching out and there is no hurry or even an expectation of immediate response but we don’t know that. So, we either drop everything to reply or we apologize for any delay in replying.

    Which makes no sense.

    I’ve been involved in direct work with clients in half-day training, or multi-hours long workshops and replied to an email afterwards with an “I’m sorry, I was tied up” opening.

    Yes, I’m apologizing for doing my job and paying attention to it.

    How dumb is that?

  • Linked: One in two employees reluctant to disclose a mental health condition at work

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Through all of this, we still haven’t addressed the tough parts.

    Sure, we’ve offered time off. We’ve told people it’s OK to not be OK. We’ve offered mental health apps for free. Maybe we’ve even offered more significant mental health benefits, or done sessions during the workday on stress and burnout.

    What we haven’t done in many cases are the harder things, like creating a culture that is not rewarding all of the things we encourage employees not to do.

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    Linked: Cybersecurity Trends | 25% of Law Firms Have Been Breached

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Law firms are an attractive target because of the data, but also because it might be easier to breach a firm than it would be to hack the clients they represent. As the rest of the article goes on to describe, there are still too many firms without cybersecurity training, proper policies, or incident response plans. That is not going to keep things secure.

    On top of that, as I’ve written before, the whole culture in firms is a problem. Anytime you have a large group of people in charge, (partners), who are often not to be questioned, social engineering gets a whole lot easier, and the likelihood that even some policy that exists might get ignored is pretty high.

  • What’s Your Definition of What a Job Should Be?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    That’s it. I know there are some who will tell you that they are passionate about their work, and they “never work a day in my life”. Good for them, but we have to start admitting that is a very small, select, group of people in a very small, select number of jobs. There are not billions of jobs out there like that for everyone to just go get. There are not even millions of them. Maybe I’m not going to change the world by doing just interesting work with people I don’t hate. That’s OK because I have the time to change the world in my own little way when I’m not working instead.

  • We Should Stop Equating Being Busy With Being Important

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    It grabbed my attention because it’s something I hear quite often, often in combination with the other, more obvious, “complaint” about working long hours.

    And yes, the word complaint is in quotes because we all know that when we mention the hours or the back-to-back meetings, we complain about it, but we are really bragging about how busy we are for one simple reason. Busy people are in demand, they are important.

    But, are they really?