With great naivete (or perhaps willful blindness) I signed my baseball-loving son up for a travel baseball team. My husband and I only have the one kid, and other, larger families seem to manage the time commitment, so why not us? Apparently we are not other people, which is a lesson I should have learned... Continue Reading →
One of the benefits of being being middle-aged is that you've had enough experience of the world that you have answers to lots of questions. Sleepless babies, finals week, bad boyfriends, the anxious wait for test results while shivering in a hospital gown? BTDT. It's true at work, too - strategies, performance reviews, annual reports:... Continue Reading →
Management books don't really thrill me. Maybe that is an odd admission for someone who writes about the world of work, and who reads pretty much anything that comes under her nose. But I am reading one now that does indeed thrill me, and I'd like you to read it too. Would you, please? And... Continue Reading →
Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson was on NPR talking about the behavior of ants. This was on Freakonomics Radio, where Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner explore economic and behavioral theory on everyday events. I won't go into ant behavior, but it segued into Levitt saying that evolutionary biologists and economists try to strip things... Continue Reading →
While procrastinating the other day I found an article on dyslexia and mathematics. The standard reading intervention for dyslexics is known as explicit teaching in phonics and other reading skills, which is in contrast to the "whole language" approach that introduces kids to rich language and meaning but leaves out the mechanics. Most kids don't... Continue Reading →
Free to Be You and Me was the soundtrack of my childhood. When I see in my mind's eye the living-room of the little red ranch house where I grew up I hear "It's All Right to Cry" and "Housework" playing in the background. But there is one song called "Helping" that sticks in my... Continue Reading →
The list is still up on my white board. What did I think, that it would just disappear as the ball dropped over Times Square, wiping away the to-do's of 2017? It didn't happen. And so the list of things I must not forget is still written in blue marker, waiting for me to tackle those things I... Continue Reading →
We try so hard to be good at what we do. We take courses, read books, ask questions, and stay late at work to put the finishing touches on our reports and budgets and presentations. What if we are trying wrong, though? What if there is a different determinant of our work that has little... Continue Reading →
You are in the middle of writing a final report and you get an email reminding you that your timesheet is due tomorrow. Or you are deep into planning for a presentation when you realize you signed up for a training you really wish you didn't have to take. Or your boss asks you to... Continue Reading →
Maybe one shouldn’t experiment on kids, but I do. Behavioral Economics is the buzz these days (did you see that Nobel Prize?) and it has huge potential implications for social behavior change, if folks like me can figure out how to use it. How to begin, though? Write something into a workplan? Hire a consultant?... Continue Reading →
Open Door Policy 