My Medium Content
Thanks for stopping by! The content here is going to be in a little flux for a while because I’m moving items and shifting some of my media creation over to Medium as a way to leverage the power of the publishing platform. I’ll still post a unique blog here and on LinkedIn from time to time, but my main focus will be on that site.
Get in touch!
pmann@educationalthinking.com
(717) 400-6266 (voicemail)
Harrisburg, PA
Fair Enough?
Many organizations, especially in government or government contracting, create “fair” interview panels from a deliberately (read: legally defensible) diverse group of disinterested interviewers. These interviews follow a rigidly structured protocol – though they often use behavioral interview questions, a subject of a future post – which disallows all but the most superficial pleasantries.
Three Rules for Managing Conflicting Priorities
However, the more I thought about it and the more I considered cleaver analogies, the more I became aware that the trope – and it is surely so overused as to be a trope by now – about working in a position with multiple conflicting priorities is really an indicator deep, underlying problems in an organization’s alignment with its objectives.
Your Thinking on Millennials is Wrong
There. I said it. You are wrong. Wrong about millennials, wrong about their place in the workforce, and wrong about how you are trying to gain their attention (long enough) to work for you. Just. Plain. Wrong. On at least three counts.
Recent Graduates …Only?
It is both amusing and problematic that the old paradox of recent graduates with 10+ years of experience is going away. It is amusing because the swell in nontraditional graduates, especially in terms of those who are either finishing their education while working a career, means that it is actually possible to hire someone who graduated in the last year (i.e. recent graduate) with a decade or more of experience.
Take a Hint from Gamers: Learn the Outcomes of Metrics and Systems
That is, we attempt to measure things at a high level that are changed at a very low level — measuring something with many contributing factors, but attributing it to only one or a few — and this tendency extends to our employee engagement efforts. However, if we took a simple hint from the world of gaming, we would quickly find that our fixation on measurement in the way that we do now only succeeds in encouraging undesirable behaviors.