Category Archives: Workplace space

DO you recognise the plaintive childhood cry: “Everybody is picking on me”? Often, when you hear the call on the playground, it is an unfounded call for attention and one that is easily soothed. In the case of “mobbing” however, … Continue reading →

BLUE-chip résumés, MBA degrees and unblemished track records are not always enough to assure promotion and successful job applications. Recruitment specialists agree that executives who lack personal charisma are often overtaken by their more magnetic colleagues on the way up … Continue reading →

RESERVE a lunchtime table any weekday at a place-to-be-seen like Linger Longer in Sandton, The Test Kitchen in Cape Town or Butcher Boys in Umhlanga Rocks and you will see that lunch is a vital cog in the wheel of … Continue reading →

ABSOLUTELY the most memorable presentation of my life took place at the first and last Tupperware party I ever attended many years ago. The hostess, a petite and eager woman in a neatly blossoming Biggie Best apron, stood in the … Continue reading →

THE most efficient, loyal and professional person I ever employed in my decade as the owner and manager of a small publishing business had several tattoos and multiple body piercings. She was also a smoker. Fortunately for me, I did … Continue reading →

MANAGEMENT specialists might finally be tuning into what dairy farmers have known since the cows came home: Listening to music while on the job increases productivity, reduces stress and achieves an all-round happier herd…um…workforce. It is true. Bovines have been … Continue reading →

IMPROVED productivity and how to achieve it are recurring themes in management. Even so, I was taken aback recently when a friend in human resources told me that she and her fellow managers were putting the final touches to their … Continue reading →

MOST management strategies are designed to improve productivity. Many of these are based on daunting tomes of complicated research and rationale, which are compiled by brilliantly brainy pomposities of professors, professionals and the equally proficient people they surround themselves with. … Continue reading →

ARE you, along with the rest of the country, looking for a great new leader for your organisation? Perhaps you are after a dynamically direct, no-nonsense type who will take charge and run your business like a smoothly synchronised scrum … Continue reading →

GROUP affirmation, I imagine, is something like I imagine group sex to be, I imagine: some get more out of it than others, I imagine – not that I think about it often, really. This occurred to me as I … Continue reading →