Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

Where should a company spend its money? Logically, you would answer that it should invest where it gains its greatest return. After all why would a for-profit enterprise make discretionary investments with little or no hope for incrimental return? If it were your business, if you were the CEO, would that make sense? Let me suggest, gently, that this is exactly the same flawed logic behind misinterpretations of Wow and World Class Talent in our company. I'm grouping these two different leadership initiatives into the same category, even though they are different initiatives, because they generated the same unintended reaction from the same areas of our company. If it happens here, I'll bet it happens in other companies as well. The theory goes that to get great people or great products you must by definition spend a lot of extra dollars. That theory is just plain wrong. A few years ago the Executive Leadership Team, even before we started calling ourselves by that name, set o...

I'm going to rant here just for a few words. Its been coming for a long time and I'm overdue so forgive me just this once. I am fed up with unresponsive people. I bet you know what I'm talking about. Those people who are supposed to return your calls but don't. Those people who receive your emails and may send you a reply a week from next Tuesday. Now, if they want something from you its urgent, maybe even a matter upon which rests the fate of the free world. Its a culture issue in some places; nobody gets back to anybody else. In other places, its an individual attitude: their time is more valuable than yours. They are more important than you. If you call out this behavior you'll hear some interesting excuses: too overworked, don't have a laptop, don't have a blackberry, wasn't properly trained, technical problems so they didn't get your call (or email, or the post-it note you left on their desk, or the pink message slip from their colleague who to...