Joy at Work(er) Blog

Written by Ed Cook

It’s the beginning of the year and you are setting goals - again. We set these annual goals in so many contexts: business goals, fitness goals, financial goals, education goals. Our list is long. You set these goals with such hope for success, only to watch the hope wither as the routine of the year kicks in, just as it has in previous years, keeping your goals unmet. You tend to be ambitious in your goals at this time of the year. Maybe you feel the renewal of the new year. Maybe the time off energizes you. Maybe you simply feel that goal setting is expected in January. Whatever the reason, disappointment often follows.

Ephemeral Expectations

It doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to set ambitious goals that are meaningful. Goals that, if achieved, would have a positive impact on your life. You can even incorporate the three-letter jargon that so often accompanies goal setting: ROI, KPI, and OKR. (More on those later.) What’s in...

Written by Roxanne Brown

In times of crisis (and change), leaders need to give people something constructive to do that’s not throwaway work. That’s what people want right now. 

In normal times, the workforce has a much easier time deciding what they should focus on. A company’s values, mission, strategic objectives and historical track record are the guide rails employees use to judge what’s important and make decisions about their priorities. Today, companies are making frequent, unexpected pivots to both survive and take advantage of new opportunities. Among other things, shifts in supplier relationships and customer buying patterns are influencing adjustments to long-established business models. For employees, this means those guide rails for knowing what’s important are less clear.

On top of which, employees are overloaded with making decisions about their safety. Employees are asking themselves these questions:

• (WFH policy) Will I be...

Written by Ed Cook

The increasing frequency of calls to “go back” to the office is not surprising.  The past year-and-a-half has been anywhere from difficult to deadly for nearly everyone on the planet.  Who wouldn’t want to roll back the clock?  Sure, we had worries back then, but, for most of the world, it was not a trade-off between your livelihood and your life.  Now, with increasing vaccination rates (although there are important concerns about new variants and resurgent infection rates), it is possible to contemplate a return to normalcy.  So, of course, talk about going back to the office has been increasing in the last couple of months and will only increase through the summer and early fall.  But before pulling the trigger on the announcement that everyone in your organization should “go back” to the office consider the impact of the Great Resignation. 

The Great Resignation

Texas A&M Associate...