One of the most uncomfortable situations for employees and managers alike is a workplace that has obvious conflict. We are taught to work as a cohesive team and lots of resources is spent on teambuilding. The word ''team'' is considered sacrosanct in fact. Yet, the dirty little secret is that conflict is inevitable. If you have worked for any ...

New graduates especially are familiar with the frustration of looking at an ad for a dream job only to see the dreaded ''experience required.''   In frustration, they argue, ''How can I get experience if no one will give me a job, a chance to gain some experience?'' But such frustration is not confined to new graduates. A colleague who ...

As 2012 draws to a close, it is common to look backwards over the past year and to set course for the year ahead. As my readers know, I am not one for making New Year's resolutions, but only because the practice is so contrived and ineffective, with many individuals setting themselves up for failure, disappointment and attendant guilt. One study ...

The 2012 Presidential elections are now over. After a record estimated 6 billion dollars and a hugely divided electorate, President Barack Obama was re-elected rather resoundingly for a second four year term. In many ways this was not the highpoint in American campaigning with boldly inaccurate campaign ads, personal attacks and accusations of ...

About a year ago I met a very engaging and outgoing young woman. She is a successful business leader and a Harvard graduate. There is not much exceptional about this, perhaps, except she is from a rural village in Jamaica and is the first in her family of nine siblings to graduate high school. I was fascinated by her MBA from Harvard but could ...

To put it mildly it's been a very stressful month. My older brother died suddenly, one friend lost his job and another was informed rather unceremoniously her marriage was over. I have had to be brother, friend, psychologist and guru all while dealing with my own grief. All this made me think once again about change and how to cope when ''stuff ...

  There are so many customer service buzzwords that I thought I had pretty much heard them all. One method that I had not heard of until a week or so is a device advocated by the Studer Group. Called the Five Fundamentals of Service, the method uses the mnemonic AIDET (pronounced Aid it). AIDET stands for Acknowledge, Introduction, ...

Every organization these days has mission and vision statements. We all learn them at orientation. Some companies insist we wear them on name tags or ''buddy badges.'' Others have them plastered in elevators, hallways and in conference rooms. Everyone wants to be the ''provider of choice'' or something similar. Everyone respects patients and ...

 In medical laboratory science -and in life in general- we tend to over-complicate issues. Making processes more difficult reduces productivity and (rather than ensure near-perfection as intended) might even be a safety risk in itself. As I wrote in a recent blog: keep it simple unless there is a clear, strong argument for doing ...

We often complicate things. Needlessly.  A seasoned laboratorian had to resign her job and move to a new city suddenly due to a family emergency. She could not find a job at her former level of responsibility or in her preferred specialty. So like most resourceful survivors she took a job in a small medical office building (MOB). The MOB is ...