Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Dan Oswald, CEO of Simplify Compliance, writes about management, leadership, and the workplace. Occasional guest articles are written by other leaders and C-Suite executives from BLR.
by Dan Oswald As a manager, would you rather hire a person who wants to do great work for a company or a person who wants to work for a great company? Think about it for a minute. There’s a difference. Who doesn’t want an employee who wants to do great work—someone who wants to […]
by Dan Oswald You hear a lot today about CEO pay and how something needs to be done about it. That CEO compensation is out of hand. It’s spoken about as if it’s a wild, living creature that must somehow be tamed. I agree that executive pay seems completely unreasonable when you look at the […]
by Dan Oswald Last week, we celebrated the first day of summer. With kids out of school for a few weeks now and the high temperatures we’ve experienced already, it seems like summer started quite a while ago. Either way, summer is here. It’s time for family vacations, afternoons at the ballpark, and concerts in […]
by Dan Oswald I recently had an experience that made me wonder, can a company become arrogant? We’ve all met arrogant people, but can a company be haughty or egotistical? Let me share the experience first, and then I’ll come back to my question. My son received a pair of wireless headphones for Christmas that […]
by Dan Oswald You may have noticed that the Nashville Predators are playing in the Stanley Cup Final. Probably not a big deal to many, but it certainly is here in Nashville. This city is afflicted with Predators fever. There’s something magical about the Predators’ playoff run, and I think I know what it is. […]
by Dan Oswald If he has learned one lesson in his four months as president, Donald Trump has certainly discovered that the scrutiny he receives as the “leader of the free world” and one of the most powerful people in the world is much greater than anything he has experienced previously. President Trump, long known […]
This week’s Oswald Letter is a guest post from Elizabeth Petersen, Simplify Compliance’s Chief People and Strategy Officer. by Elizabeth Petersen Less than 10 minutes into the interview, I knew I was bombing. I was fresh out of college, interviewing for a “stretch” position as a program manager at a prestigious teaching hospital. I was […]
by Dan Oswald How well do you really know yourself? It can seem like a silly question. You spend every day with yourself. You’re privy to all of your most private thoughts. Yet how well do you know yourself? The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. […]
by Dan Oswald In the blockbuster Disney movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Captain Jack Sparrow’s most treasured possession is his compass. This makes sense. Jack is a ship’s captain, and he needs his compass to do his job—navigate the high seas. The problem is that his compass doesn’t tell […]
by Dan Oswald As a business leader, it’s likely you’re continually looking for ways to make better decisions. If so, you might want to take a look at the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman’s book is an interesting look into how people think and make decisions and the […]