One of the weirder experiences most of us can relate to is being in a meeting where nearly all of the participants disagree with the decision being made, but the power dynamics keep anyone in the room from objecting. It’s never a great feeling, and it seems to happen for a few different reasons
I'm not one to extol the virtues of failure. I get annoyed whenever people talk about “celebrating failure.” That said, there are some benefits to getting your ass handed to you every once in a blue moon.
Investing time, money and energy into a strategy, only to have the market not respond is like taking a punch. You might not get knocked out, but the effect of multiple blows can take a toll on your confidence and enthusiasm.
I nearly scrapped this column, because they’re not bad ideas per se. Both are still in fashion today, especially in the startup-o-sphere, and like many popular ideas there's more than a grain of truth to them. But these two ideas have run themselves ragged, and I see them doing more harm than good when I encounter them.
Some people take time off and re-assess things when they get to a point where they feel disconnected or in despair. They’re the smart ones; plenty of others fall into the “sleepwalking” stage. They’re too spent to approach their work with creativity and enthusiasm anymore, and their output predictably suffers.
Excluding all of the tools I use to maintain my website and do my email and social marketing, I think I can function in my professional life with just twenty-five tools. Pause for a moment and count the number of different products you use just to capture, organize, analyze, and transmit information. Now add in the administrative tools and the ones that are highly specific to your job function, and I bet you’ll have a number not very different from mine, if not higher. Some of them you choose to use, and some of them you have to use. I want to focus on this latter, because here is where you’re likely to encounter tools that get in the way of doing your job. Frustrating though it is, broken processes and clumsy tools are opportunities to make your company better...
Many of us pride ourselves on our work ethic, but in the professional world outworking everyone isn’t a sufficient strategy for getting ahead. Hard work is the basic ingredient of career advancement. Not much will happen for you if you’re not willing to put in some serious effort. But it also probably won’t set you apart from your peers as much as you might think. One of the quirks of working life is that we usually sabotage our ability to differentiate ourselves on the basis of how much effort we put into our jobs.
