Ocean Palmer

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Why Companies Herd Cats

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My friends in the staffing and recruiting profession stay relentlessly busy and vital to their organizations because of a universal reality: Not everyone on the payroll cares about the company paying them. Every organization, small or large, is comprised of good workers, great actors, and others who vacillate between the two. Depending upon how much […]

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Why Good Workers Get Stuck Doing More

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I am proud of my website and readily admit I had very little to do with its design or construction, other than answer questions for a tremendous thinker, Boston’s Steve Bennett. Bennett specializes in author websites. He developed my cocktail napkin design after interviewing me for an hour with my publicist and one of his […]

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How to Connect with People You Meet

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Ever meet someone and click instantly? Or face the opposite problem: struggling to have an easy, unforced interaction? Chances are you’ve done both. A big reason this happens is due to how the mind operates. People tend to think in one of two directions, either concept-to-detail or detail-to-conclusion. Most people can flex from one direction […]

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How to Deal with Conflicting Values

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One of the most troubling issues a worker may face is how to deal with a clash between personal values and business practice. When core beliefs conflict with company practices, an emotional reaction results. I’ve lived this one; it had a lot to do with why I left Xerox after 20 great years. My role […]

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Teenie-Weenie Pork Chops

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I left home at 17 and moved south a thousand miles to attend a small private college in northeast Florida. Needing to pay my way through school, I sought a full-time job. I was lucky to get one quickly, at a Winn-Dixie grocery store near campus. Roy Touchton, the regional manager, sized me up and […]

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Why Are So Many Unhappy at Work?

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Associated Press economics writer Jeannine Aversa recently chronicled the steady decline of workforce satisfaction, reporting that less than half of Americans (45%) are satisfied with their jobs. This is the lowest rating in the two-plus decades the Conference Board research group has studied the issue; and it represents a significant drop from 2008’s rating of […]

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One Giant Hammer

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A tidal change takes six hours, the moon shoving seawater far ashore before changing its mind and pulling it back out. During my final semester of college I invested hundreds of hours studying waves from atop the weathered and warped floorboards of an old wooden pier that extended from Jacksonville Beach into the sea. Day […]

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