The things I don’t know every day could fill volumes. Just today, looking at my calendar, I can see I don’t know enough to do half the things I should do. That country budget that was slashed? No idea what the reduction means in real dollars and people and projects. I haven’t read it carefully... Continue Reading →
Workplaces are micro-societies with their own unique cultures, their own parallels to the unwritten rules of behavior that govern societies at large. We recognize coming-of-age rituals, birth ceremonies, and courtship norms as culture-determined behaviors – but so are coffee breaks, promotions, and the subtleties of choosing a seat at the conference table. I’m sure there... Continue Reading →
It’s weird to talk about wisdom at work. Wisdom is a word like “love” or “honor” or “courage” that doesn’t seem to belong to work culture, but instead to novels and maybe the military or religion. Not work. Yet over the past months I’ve been wrestling with how to define and describe those intangible attributes... Continue Reading →
We are all critics. We critique restaurants on Yelp, books on Amazon, and each other with the tap (or not) of the Like button on Facebook. We critique ourselves in the mirror and in our bank balance. Heaven help me, I’ve critiqued my husband for the way he folds a shirt and my son for... Continue Reading →
Ten year olds on a basketball court get and give a lot of feedback. Yes, there is the teasing and the joshing, the urgent calls of “Here! Hey! Come on, I’m OPEN,” the cajoling and teaching of the coaches, the whistle. But the feedback I was watching most (as I sat on a very hard... Continue Reading →
There are stories I never tell at work, and that no one else tells, either. I don’t mean salacious stories, or really even stories of ourselves outside of work – those maybe are best left untold. I mean the stories of our selves at work, when we are at our most vulnerable and raw. Who... Continue Reading →
It is easy to believe that we run programs from Baltimore. That is what we do, right? But it’s a fallacy, maybe a sort of optical illusion, a trick of perspective. When I sit in my office in Baltimore, looking out over a busy American street, hearing the hum of dozens of other staff in... Continue Reading →
In all my travels I had never looked out an airplane window at 20,000 feet and seen nothing but dust. But the other day, wanting to see the landscape below while flying over Northern Nigeria en route to Abuja I looked out and saw nothing but the Harmattan winds swirling dust from the Sahel. Huh,... Continue Reading →
In an alternate universe I spend my days messing about in boats. I've always loved boats and water, and since my early teens I've felt most myself, most alive, in the sliding seat of a rowing shell. And yet I am not a rowing coach, or a boat builder, or any of the other (limited)... Continue Reading →
Halfway through my most difficult trip I called my boss for guidance, and the moment I heard his voice through the crackling line I burst into tears and couldn’t talk for crying. I was sitting in a hotel room in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in the middle of winter and I was cold, exhausted, and in over... Continue Reading →
Open Door Policy 