It’s time to downsize. I was listening to the actor from Breaking Bad talk about clutter. He attributes clutter to economic status – he grew up poorer then he is now, but he’s learned to let go of things. It’s true that I have a lot of stuff. One friend came over and started looking […]
Archive | Riffs & Ideas
According to wiki, “In jazz and R&B, riffs are often used as the starting point for longer compositions”. In our case, we’d like to think of them as the starting point for random stories. This could be the random section where even whining is allowed. Heck, it could eventually turn into a song.
Currently without Company
It’s sort of weird when people ask me where I work. I feel like the character Robin Scherbatsky, in How I Met Your Mother, who struggles with her identity as a Canadian living in America. After feeling like a woman with no country…, the LA Times reports on the episode, Robin decides to become a woman […]
Is It Who you Know or What you Know at 18?
I suppose at 40, I can say that career success is a combination of who I know and what I know. But at 18, can networking really help? At coffee with a friend, she mentioned how she was mentoring her niece and somewhat surprised that she lacked any sense of structure around goal setting and […]
What We Can Learn From Pop Culture
If there is one thing that pop culture has taught me, it’s that the one-liner quips on T.V. can often be ridden with deep and relatable meaning. I was watching Glee, (shocking, I know) and there was a line that resonated immediately with the pain of being dumped by my employer. “Let me give you […]
Truth and Lies in Leadership
Remember that catchy title – Truth and Lies in Advertising? Well, it felt appropriate tonight when I was thinking about a comment my executive coach made last week. Agent M, he said, it’s hard to fathom, but politics rank as the first or second most important part of doing a good job. Ugh. So that’s […]
Zappos CEO – Happiness Means Firing?
By Agent M1 on December 7, 2012 in Fireside Chats, Riffs & Ideas, Weekly Survival, Work Life Balance
Now Tony Hsieh, he’s a CEO who has nailed happiness. He has preached how to ensure employees are happy at work, and why it’s important to create a culture of happiness for employee productivity and company success. He’s received a lot of attention over his book. And yet… I just saw a blog post where he […]
Over 40 and reinventing
When do we reinvent ourselves? I probably do every decade. And so I’m on my 4th decade of reinvention. In my industry, you probably only remain relevant until the age of 55. So I figure I’ve got a good decade to a decade and a half of this line of work, which is why I […]
When you have a solution, but no one is listening
As mentioned in my last post, I work in a culture that breathes polite. But what I didn’t say is that there are loyalties that run so deep where I work, it’s hard to build trust. If you’ve been following my blog, there are two human truths to Agent M: 1. Issues: She has insecurities every […]
Polite Society
I think a fine name for my place of labor is polite society. We are all really nice to one another, and when any one of us breaks the polite code of conduct, it’s frowned upon. The contrast is so different from where I was. So much so, that I need to stop second guessing […]
Being Too Good at Your Job, Episode 1
Fall is here, so it’s time to kick off a new Blog series. I know this has become a cliché for government workers, but I want to address something that is not always apparent in the corporate world, yet omnipresent nonetheless. Being too good at your job. This is episode 1. Out of respect to […]
