This Fourth of July is a watershed for me. The day marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the United States declaring sovereignty from the British Empire. The second paragraph that reads “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with…
There are books and discussion all about how to succeed in the workplace. Flexibility and doing extraordinary things can be amazing for a career. This is a different approach. Before you can become the most awesome employee ever, you need to make sure you don’t unexpectedly find yourself in the precarious situation of being dismissed,…
Don’t destroy your brand as you try to build it. It sounds like common sense, which it is, but it is not common usage. At work (or anywhere else for that matter), I wanted people to like me, so I always volunteered for extra tasks, to work more than anyone else. While others would have…
“The plumber is delayed again. I am tired of switching out these towels everyday to get all the water off the floor around the toilet.” “Turn the water off.” “What?” “There is a handle behind the commode to turn the water off.” “There is?” “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” “I didn’t think of…
I present to you the adult temper tantrum. Angry Person on the phone: “I spent 20 hours doing this revalidation and then I couldn’t submit because I was revoked.” Pause… “The note said I would I was due to expire on April 30 and I could not submit on the 30th.” Pause… “ This is the dumbest…
Memorial Day – at times it seems we are trying to hard to forget what the day is really about. Which is rather ironic for a holiday that is all about memory. Memorial day is in honor of those who have died while serving in the country’s armed forces. Formerly known as decoration day, the…
“Weren’t you afraid to do this photo?” “No. I safety pinned my shirt to my pants to avoid accidental exposure.” “That’s not what I meant – you are in the middle of a sidewalk doing a wide arm headstand. I don’t even know where to start, you could have fallen, your bare hands are on…
“It’s your fault.” “No, you don’t understand. I continue to go above and beyond what is expected to help this client time after time. I have bent over backwards trying to help this team. This last request is just ridiculous, but they keep hounding me.” “Yes, I understand and it is your fault. You have…
Lurking in the shadows of the sustainable energy efficient lightening of corporate offices are vampires. I am not kidding. This is not a Halloween fluff piece. This is the alarming truth about an epidemic in the workplace. The savvy office worker knows it is essential to show value, be it sales, numbers, creativity, etc. Then,…
“…what leads you to believe you are are so important to this organization you can do anything you want. Sure, we all say you are the one to watch. That’s because you are the personification of incompetence and a real time version of what not to do.” TV, more specifically the half hour comedy, has…
“Do you fall through out the day?” “Yes.” “How many times? “Depends, anywhere from 10 to 15 times a day.” It was then I noticed the receptionist in radiology looked absolutely horrified. Which made me nervous, so I mumbled out, “Why do you ask?” “We’re trying to determine if you need assistance walking to the…
In the movies, there is the soundtrack to cue the moment the hero rises and accomplishes something magical, from the perfect solo, the game saving basket, the solving of an equation, the realization they are about to lose the love of their life and it all changes. There is no music in real life to…
Reality TV illustrates a powerful sense of self and confidence. I watch American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance in amazement and puzzlement. Contestants who felt they had exceptional ability are yet stunned when turned away from the show. Did these people have no one to tell them of the disparity between their…
Multitasking is a myth. Don’t fool yourself. This is March Madness and I cannot work and watch the game and be fully engaged in each. Therefore, I confess, I must prioritize. I have my day job which I cannot neglect. Then it comes down to watching the games and writing. I write weekly, but March…
I did not get to go to the big awards dinner. I did not get the big bonus. I did not get written up in the company newsletter. No one on my team did. We did not have a successful product launch. In 1986, no one was interested in sleek stand alone ATMs. The successful…
March 17th! That’s the day the men’s NCAA College Basketball playoffs start. I don’t have a team, I have a history.The year I graduated from the University of Tennessee was the first year the NCAA sanctioned the women’s basketball event. I was there during the reign of the legendary Pat Summit who has the most…
Abandon the concept of a resume. Yup throw it out. When I graduated from the University of Tennessee, I had one of those carefully constructed mechanical engineering resumes I used for all my interviews including Proctor & Gamble (adult diaper manufacturing), Newport News Shipbuilding (HVAC on ships) and IBM (banking). Three very different companies. Three…
Don’t destroy your image as you try to build it. It sounds like common sense, which it is, but it is not common usage. Your image is your brand. At work (or anywhere else for that matter), I wanted people to like me, so I constantly volunteered for extra tasks, working more than anyone else. While…
Elevator pitches are all the rage. An elevator pitch is the 30 second speech summary used to quickly and simply define a profession, product, service, organization or event and its value proposition. A few years ago, I discovered the best way to do this, so it sounds natural and yields results, is to put this…
OK, who are you most likely to believe. The person who is arguing a fact and yet you know they were wrong two weeks ago, but would not admit it. OR The person who is arguing a fact and in the last year, that person has admitted twice, they were wrong. I’m thinking, you’re going…
Is the word love over used? Is there a place you love, a food you love, a song you love, a movie you love, a person you love? Can it all be love? If it makes you smile and it gives you joy, then its probably love. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Ain’t nobody got time for that! The average attention span has dropped from 12 minutes to 5 minutes in the last decade. There are more mobile devices than people on the planet. Communication has become a competition. We have a lot of things vying for our shortened attention span. You need to make a point…
When you set goals, consider what you will need to give up, realize the expert has failed more than the novice has tried and finally, find your people. Surround yourself with the “right” people. Your people are those that support your goals and share your vision. Your people are those that want to see you succeed.…
“Life is too short,” is an over used, misguided cliché of fill in the blank babble. At least from an analytical view. The average lifespan for American men is about 76 years and for American women it’s around 81 years. Not that short. You don’t know when you will die, you don’t know the day,…
The expert has failed more times than the novice has tried. That was the caption for an Instagram post showing woman repeatedly trying a headstand and toppling over into a backbend. A lot of adults say, I tried <fill in the blank> once, couldn’t do it and it’s just not for me. Tried once and…
Last week my post explored why wait until January first to start resolutions. A resolution worth doing is worth doing immediately and not waiting. This week is part two. There is more to a resolution than a before and after. There is more to a resolution than those verb noun statements like “get fit”, “save…
New Years Resolutions? Really? Stop. Consider, if it’s a really good resolution, why wait until January 1st to start doing it? Any reason for waiting is probably the reason it needs to be a resolution in the first place. For example, weight loss. Waiting until the first of January because it’s hard to control eating? Is…
Happy Holidays. Click here to view the BOUS Blooper reel with never seen before footage of Balancing On Unstable Objects. Photo by Sheila Thorne
There are those who balance their bank accounts and those who don’t. As someone who does, I had a recent encounter with someone who doesn’t. I could provide no rational as to why this was a necessary activity since in my decades of doing this, the bank has never been wrong. It was a rather…
Look at the photo. I am inverted. I am focused, you can see the strain. If I lose balance, I not only fall out of the pose, I will also fall off the kitchen counter. Do not try to help. I have an awareness of my body and balance in space. My stability in this…
It’s Friday night and I’m ready to drive to Berkeley for dinner and theater. I get cash from the ATM; return to my car, turn the key in the ignition and nothing. I mean nothing. No sound. After three attempts to start, I proceeded to mitigate. First, I called my friend whom I was meeting…
After a dinner party this summer, the last few guests offered to help bring in everything from outside. With great bravado, I quickly waved their help away. I was the host; they were guest. They reminded me that if I left all that food outside, I would have uninvited guests at the critter buffet. The…
Yes, I know, I advocate not using slang. This week, I’ll make an exception and include the definition. It’s “meeting road kill.” This is a situation in which one person monopolizes a meeting in a non-productive manner thoroughly exhausting the participants to a near comatose state and leading to the following exchange of text: “He’s sucking…
Maybe I was just a confused child. I took two separate ideas and made meaning. One of my favorite movies was the Wizard of Oz (my fascination with the flying monkeys is gothic tale on its own). But there was a particular scene in the movie where Dorothy comes upon a field of beautiful red…
Movies and TV have led us astray with respect to drowning. People who are actually drowning are not thrashing and crying for help. In reality, drowning is unnoticed by observers. The person cannot stay at the surface of the water long enough to cry for help. The head bobs on the surface of the water,…
“We can’t work with that team!” This is the part where management brings in team building exercises. Falling back into the arms of your team, ropes courses, solving puzzles and playing games. This will help you work better because …the team has now “bonded?” No doubt, team members may get to know each other better, they may…
You’re out. The role of the referee is to make a call on plays and to throw those out of the game who aren’t playing fair. That’s power. Imagine for a moment if we had business referees. Strike one. You just repeated an idea that was said 5 minutes ago by someone else and are…
Quick quiz: Are you typically a direct or sideways communicator? OK, I suppose this requires a little bit of a definition. I am trying to break the habit of communicating by suggestion. It’s the style where I tell people something and expect them to take what I think is the next logical step. I want…
I learned about Humpty Dumpty as a child. Humpty Dumpty was apparently an egg, who fell off the wall into a state of extreme disrepair, and neither the King’s men nor the King’s horses could put Humpty back together again. Several things about this confused me, for instance, how an egg got on top of…
We were nearing the end of a five-hour photo session. Niall, the photographer, asked if I wanted any other photos. I looked at Bo and said, “Go monkey,” and then covered my mouth. Without saying a word, he covered his eyes. Leslie, in total confusion said, “Huh? What are you two doing?” “The monkeys1. Cover…
“No, that will not work. This is a requirements session, we need to come to some kind of consensus on what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.” The words came out of my mouth before the part of my brain that filters what would be considered the right…
Maybe I am just a grump. Today, I presented a great idea, an elegant solution for a client problem. Everyone agreed the solution worked EXCEPT there was a problem with the name of the module. Forty-five minutes later people were still complaining they did not like the name. They were not discussing a new name,…
Try as I could I could not do a one-handed handstand. My arm would not budge as I tried to lift it up. A friend suggested that I shift my body weight? HUH? What a seemingly simple idea. How could that possibly be the solution? As engineer I know about balance. If one thing shifts,…
Labor Day in the US means different things to people. For some it is the end of summer, others the start of school and for retailers, it is the big sale day. For me, it is a day to remember my parents. Growing up I had two models of “labor,” my mom at Hampton University…
My sister-in-law asked me if I knew the Big Bang Theory. Well of course, it’s the theory that the universe is continually expanding. It started as a single point and then BANG. Over time, we have become hotter and denser. Isn’t it? I presumed the subsequent laughter was either due to my pantomime of bang…
Oh, how I wish this was a dream; one of those warning type dreams that remind me of what I need to do. “What’s the status with the Open Group?” “Uhmmm, I don’t have it. “ “Have you talked to them?” “Well, no.” “Any contact?” “Uh no – I forgot.” “Sheila, this is really important.…
“I’m not ignoring you, I’m just not listening to what you are saying.” I didn’t really understand this when I first heard until I found myself yelling it during a photo session for this blog. My creative director and photographer started shouting out instructions: “Jump up in the air and do a split!” and “Can…
“Well we all get emails about ‘hot girls for you’ but that doesn’t mean anything.” Yep, I was on mute. While I can be mouthy, I do observe a certain degree of professional decorum. But let’s backup a few moments. I was on a teleconference. The host started to review changes that will be in…
I have a look of absolute of outrage on my face – I can tell because I feel that vein popping out between my eyebrows and I yell out, “That is the dumbest thing I have heard all year,” during a meeting. Fortunately, I work from home and my phone was on mute. There are…
A month ago, I sprayed compressed air all over my keyboard. I was convinced that once the dust dislodged, I would be able to work; because at this moment, I could not get into work. This was a serious problem. I had no motivation. I was procrastinating. I had work to do and no inclination…
