I’m an avid fan of video games.  A few years ago that would have made me a social outcast.  But times they are a changin’ and video games have gone from obscure hobby to mainstream entertainment.  Virtually (no pun intended) everyone plays a video game whether it’s World of Warcraft, the Wii, or on Facebook.  When I play games I often feel compelled to chase after completely meaningless things.  For instance I put in more hours than I’d care to admit into a game called Diablo 2 just to get rare armor so I could brag about it to my ...

I bought an android phone a few months ago.  Actually it was the Nexus One from Google.  I bought it because I love technology.  And although I’m rarely an early adopter, I desperately needed a new phone.  In a world where business and life merge everywhere, I needed something more than my outdated blackberry.  So I took the plunge and went with the Nexus One. For most of my life I’ve loved technology.  I remember walking to elementary school during the summer with my Dad to play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIgs.  I remember fondly hacking my old x386 Windows ...

I admit it.  I have a weakness.  No matter what I do I can’t seem to shake.  And it’s this: I love to learn. There I said it.  Now I can enroll in Learner’s Anonymous. Why is this a problem?  Because learning isn’t the same as doing.  And it’s in the doing that greatness happens.   Go ahead and pick anything you want.  A thought, a belief, an opinion.  But I can tell you it didn’t matter until someone did something about it.  You might have a great idea for a new TV product, but it won’t matter until you do it.  Do ...

When I talk to various companies I am always intrigued by how they view working at home.  Some organizations readily embrace flexible hours and work from home.  But others treat working from home as evil.  As if the worst thing someone could do is spend time in comfort at their house (or apartment, or coffee shop, or, well you get the idea). The argument against working from home tends to revolve around “building relationships” and “being seen” at the office.  Both of these are good things, and work-from-home proponents tend to gloss over how important they are.  But a lot of ...

Be the Post Office.  That’s probably the easiest way to not make money. But if you want a more sophisticated answer it’s have an attitude of “it’s not my job.” I get paid to bring change to organizations.  That’s my job.  And I love it.  There are very few drawbacks to that line of work.  But one of the biggest is the fact that I can’t read a story about something without ...

Volunteers are special people.  They agree to do a lot of work that you and I would only do if someone paid us.  They save organizations, time, money, benefits, energy and a host of other things.  Often they are our biggest supporters. Yet we don’t always treat them that way.  We can easily lose sight of what drives them, what motivates them.  This isn’t a condemnation of us.  We often have good intentions to work with volunteers, but we are busy too.  And sometimes volunteer things get pushed to the bottom… When this ...

One of the things I do is teach Industrial – Organizational Psychology at Xavier University.  As I was preparing a lecture on employee training I was reminded of just how important it is to have motivated employees go through the training.  No matter how brilliantly you’ve designed a training program, no matter how engaging your speaker is, no matter how relevant your training program is to their jobs it won’t matter if the employee doesn’t want to learn. Nothing can overcome someone who is ...

The temptation in our work is to cater to the lowest common denominator*.  If you're an artist you want to make something that people "get."  If you're a communicator you want to develop a talk that people can "relate to."  If you're in a professional field you want to design a product that appeals to a "wide audience."  Or if you're a social worker you want a program that is "easy to understand." The problem is, this leads us to cater to the lowest common denominator.  We built programs, create art, and design communications for the people who are least ...

When I was in graduate school my roommate and I spent a lot of time eating at fast food restaurants.  This was natural since neither of us could cook.  One thing we noticed in all of our trips was that the vast majority of employees clearly hated their jobs.  Everything from their posture to their facial expressions told us they didn't want to help us.  And so, we would joke about the "job satisfaction levels" of a clearly unhappy employee.  And yes, this is what you do when you're in graduate school. But those jokes always stuck with me.  Even to ...

Focus.  Learning.  Behavior change.  Those are three things that don't happen until something becomes relevant. One of the biggest challenges facing healthcare is getting people to change their lifestyles.  We all know that we shouldn't smoke or overeat.  That we should stay away from salty foods and avoid high-cholesterol products.  But how many of us do that?  For that matter, how many of us go to the gym regularly? We know what we are supposed to do, we just don't do it.  Why? I believe it's for the simple reason that it is hard to change behaviors until they become meaningful.  Which is ...