I was in my mid-twenties, with very little business experience. Like many young people that age, I was keen to prove to myself and others that I could contribute in useful ways but had nothing remarkable to point to that would give me any special claim to anyone’s attention. I had potential as we all do, but that potential was still completely unrealized from a professional standpoint and could easily have remained so.
Well over ten years ago, in what now feels like a completely different life, I attended a management meeting with a few hundred colleagues.
“Do we want a market economy, or a market society?” That is the uncomfortable question that philosopher Michael J. Sandel asks at the beginning of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, first published in 2012.
We all face choices and trade-offs, it’s just part of life. Some are small and (likely) inconsequential – like picking between the pear and the custard at the dessert table last night.
In Canada, November is Financial Literacy Month and 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of this important national initiative. The focus of this year’s campaign, quite appropriately, is “to help Canadians learn how to manage their finances in challenging times.”
I admit it freely: Whether it be books or movies, I’m a huge science fiction fan. I recently re-watched one of my perennial favorites—James Cameron’s 1986 ‘Aliens’ starring Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley.
Work can be hard and it definitely has its highs and lows. But for many people, pride in a job well done ranks right up there in terms of what gives meaning to their lives. Does work get the respect it deserves for the reasons it should?
Here’s an interesting question for you: Should you run your team at work as a high-performance athletic program, or as a community sport club? Stop. Don’t answer just yet. I know, I know: You’re a high-performance type of person.
A few weeks ago, baffled by the workings of the LinkedIn algorithm, someone left the following comment in response to one of my posts: “I know someone who has liked your posts and articles in the past and still doesn’t get you in her feed (as she would prefer).”
I wade today into the fraught topic of systemic racism and discrimination. I do so because I believe systemic racism exists and that it can be fought. It is my contention in this article that when a minority faces systemic disadvantages, which are the flip side of the dominant group’s entrenched privileges, good will and warm feelings alone are not sufficient to disrupt the status quo.
I was chatting with a colleague a few days ago. He was telling me about the way he likes to scrutinize the numbers every single day and I was telling him how I really don’t. “I’m a mathematician by training”, he offered. “I like numbers.” “I’m a lawyer by background”, I replied. “I like words.” What ensued was one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in a long time.
It may be comforting to some people, as they get older, to think that everything worked out for them just as they had planned; as it may also be comforting, in one’s youth, to believe that one’s life will unfold according to a meticulously drawn plan.
