Learning Center

Our digital devices, the screens connecting us to an infinitely wide world of information, pose a significant challenge because they are so compelling and distracting. They pull our focus away from being in the moment and compromise our ability to concentrate on the essential tasks of daily life: paying attention to our loved ones, solving our work challenges, and practicing ...

It’s not a shocker to learn that a blog with a name like stress.health.business. (inaugurated in 2012) has featured more posts about stress than any other topic. However, you may be surprised to see how many different dimensions there are to the stress/productivity/health relationship. So, as we commence our 6th year of the blog, I have anthologized a diverse sampling ...

In our culture, which extols the merits of authenticity and transparency in everything from TED talks about leadership to advertisements for our food, it may seem a bit contrarian to make a case for the virtues of faking it. But I’d like to try.   Suppose you are the manager of a busy gift store at the height of the ...

        I am thankful for a family that loves me even though I am so reliably imperfect. I am thankful for a profession which allows me to share meaningful moments in the lives of others. I am thankful for the hopeful and excited smile I receive from my granddaughter each time she greets me. I am thankful ...

Today, as Spaceship Earth orbits the sun at the unimaginable speed of 67,000 miles per hour, a new passenger has come aboard. He is my first grandson, Isaiah Kenneth Sagor, and the story of how he came into being is, like all births, a historical miracle defying comprehension. Isaiah’s great-grandmother, Sylvia age 91, found her passage into this world only ...

The current Market Basket saga features product and customer shortages but there certainly is no lack of compelling story lines and business lessons here. The intricate melodrama of the Demoulas’ family feud, the emergence of a rank and file army supporting a fired CEO and the suspense concerning how and when all the complicated elements will be resolved have captured, ...

Today is my birthday. My mother enjoys telling me that I stood at the gate of our backyard inspecting the presents from guests to my second birthday party. She has pictures to prove it. Along with conveying my apologies for all past episodes of rampant birthday greed, I would like to share a few birthday wishes today.   I wish ...

“When one aged Zen master was asked to relate his biography, he exclaimed, “Just one mistake after another!”  from Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das. The experience of each day changes us, even those routine days that seem to be nudging us toward nothing in particular. Like water smoothing a stone, the accumulation of daily experiences and choices ...

Stress is a modern plague responsible for 75% to 90% of all doctor’s office visits. OSHA has declared it a workplace hazard costing American business $300 billion annually. Conventional wisdom blames work, and its toxic stew of constant deadlines, excessive workloads, 24/7 connectivity and globalization, as the primary stressor in contemporary life. However, new research, recently published in the Journal ...

There is nothing better than an impending disaster to clarify the distinction between the essential and the trivial. When total annihilation is on the horizon no one is wasting any time worrying about whether it’s going to rain this weekend. The standard formula for disaster movies builds upon the stark choices offered by the threat of total calamity. In response ...

Joan Venocchi wrote an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe last week about the curious case of Kelly Greenberg, the embattled head coach of the Boston University woman’s basketball team. It seems that her players just can’t agree on the question of whether she is a bully. Ms. Greenberg has been accused of driving four players to quit this year’s ...

The year was 1971, my first as a school psychologist in Michigan’s Willow Run School District. On April 3, the eve of the third anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Willow Run School Board met to consider its options for honoring the life and work of Dr. King.   Dr. R. Wiley Brownlee, the high school principal, ...

Ethel Weiss is the primary (and sole) investigator for the longest running research project in the country on the subject of happiness and job satisfaction. When I tell you that the study is being conducted in Massachusetts you might reasonably suspect that the Harvard Business School or M.I.T. have something to do with it, but they don’t. Ethel’s extraordinary research ...

I am concerned about the escalating lack of civility that surrounds us in our everyday life. Incivility at work has many different forms. We see everything from the gossiping coworker to the intimidating bully. Then there are the supervisors who take credit for your work but never give credit and the managers who are dismissive and rude and will not ...

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” More than ninety heads of state, and tens of thousands of South Africans, met in a Soweto soccer stadium today to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela. What accounts for the deep reverence we ...

I am thankful for a family that loves me even though I am so reliably imperfect. I am thankful for a profession which allows me to share meaningful moments in the lives of my clients. I am thankful for the hopeful and excited smile I receive from my granddaughter each time she greets me. I am thankful for public libraries ...

“If management stopped demotivating their employees then they wouldn’t have to worry so much about motivating them.” W. Edwards Deming If you read my blog post last week you know that I was the winner of The Listserve email lottery and as a result had the opportunity to ask 5 questions to a diverse group of 25,000 strangers. This week ...

What would you want to say if you had the chance to send an email to 25,000 strangers dispersed across planet earth? That’s the question that faced me last week and I had 48 hours to decide what to do with this opportunity. The Listserve is an email lottery. One person every day has a chance to broadcast a message ...

If you were to ask a group of people if money can buy you happiness, I expect about half of them would say, “Of course it can” (while speculating on what kind of idiot asks a question with such an obvious answer). I think the other half would be just as convinced in the opposite direction: “Of course it can’t!” ...

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Washington civil rights march and Dr. Martin Luther King’s iconic “I have a dream speech.” I have listened to that speech countless times and it never fails to inspire me. David Brooks wrote a wonderful tribute in the New York Times yesterday analyzing the leadership approach of Dr. King where “the idea was ...

I hope that you had a wonderful Father’s Day and were able to share some old memories and perhaps create some new ones as well. Now that I have completed my ascent to that third rung on the generational ladder, I feel a keener appreciation for the lifelong reach of my grandfathers’ influence. My grandfathers, Jack and Sam, had very ...

In March of this year, I had the honor of being invited to Brazil as part of a vocational and cultural exchange sponsored by Rotary International. During my month abroad, I met with many talented Human Resources professionals, primarily in the manufacturing sector. Here are five observations I made in the course of those meetings.   1) Brazilian Human Resource professionals ...

            This week’s blog, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, has been published on the WBUR Cognoscenti website. ...

We love lists and we particularly love “best of” lists.  During the last days of December, the print and electronic media are brimming with the seasonal staples: “THE BEST (WORST) MOVIES/STORIES/BOOKS/ENTERTAINERS/GADGETS/SONGS/ETC OF THE YEAR” lists. December’s steady diet of top ten lists will soon be followed by January’s abundance of New Year’s resolutions. Lists are an efficient way of organizing ...