Tag Archives: orgdevl

Wisdom Wednesday – “This was the future at one point. Let’s use all this cool tech we have to make people’s lives easier, more fulfilling, and safer.”

Two months ago, my fully remote job of 3 years began a campaign to bring all employees back to office. This confused me, as I was originally hired to be fully remote. I lost that status because we recently moved into a temporary apartment while we shop for our first home. 1/ — Jauwn (@Jauwnio) […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Other People’s Strengths Are A Complement, Not A Threat

My first boss in libraries told me how important it was to have a team that had varied backgrounds and skill sets. “Everybody thinks it would be better to have a bunch of underlings who were just like them but that’s the worst thing you could have.” (Of course there was some irony that two […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Morbidity and Mortality Conferences

I just finished a book called “The Big Fail: What The Pandemic Revealed About Who It Protects and Who it Leaves Behind” which is a fairly even handed look at the Covid pandemic, three years after it began, by the same journalists who wrote “Smartest Guys in the Room” about the Enron scandal. This book […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Performance Punishment

This ties into the post I did last week about Rock Stars, Rock Steadies, and Rock Bottoms.  As a leader, important to regularly assess if you’re punishing your rock stars for being so good at their job (and maybe ask colleagues too as we all have our blind spots.)

Wisdom Wednesday – Rock Stars, Rock Steadies, and Rock Bottoms

I was recently out for supper with a bunch of friends including one high level manager who oversees a Canada-wide IT team for a large corporation. It was interesting to compare notes about our workplaces. He said he is all about high performers and strongly believes in performance management, expecting high results but also rewarding […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Overt vs. Covert

This isn’t really advice I was given by someone but more of a personal observation I’ve made after seeing it repeatedly over the years.  Whenever there is something decided, especially when its some sort of major decision, there’s usually an overt reason people give for the decision but also a covert reason they may or […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch

I first heard this advice years ago when I was still in the role of Organization Development Specialist at Regina Public Library. In hindsight, I don’t think I appreciated what an amazing job that was to have right at the start of my library career. Our Director (still the same guy all these years later) […]

Wisdom Wednesday – “Most People Want To Solve The Problem But Surprisingly Few Want To Understand The Problem”

This advice is based on something that was inspired by the nicest compliment I have probably ever received as a librarian, only six short months into my career. The context was that I was doing a probation review with my first boss in libraries and he asked he what my strengths were. “I’m a real […]

Wisdom Wednesday – “What If You’re Both Right?”

This was a lesson I learned from my first manager at RPL (who also happened to be the Manager of HR so had tons of great insights into managing people, dealing with conflict and so on.) The context was that I was in a very unique role as Organizational Development Specialist, responsible for all staff […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Actions, Not Words

I’ve been thinking about actions vs. words a lot lately. One of the things that really brought home this important distinction was when I had to leave the Regent Place branch of Regina Public Library after eight years as Branch Head following a re-org of supervisors and managers. It was a pretty emotional time and […]