Think back to your first day at your current job. Were you greeted at the door with fanfare and taken for lunch? Or, were you shown to your workstation and given an employee handbook? How did the way people treated you make you feel about your new workplace? How did this affect your subsequent behaviour at work? If you’re like … Read More

Workplace culture is the most significant factor that influences happiness, work relationships, and job satisfaction. Having a clear understanding of what workplace culture is, and what your own organization’s culture is, will help you more easily identify problems and develop strategies to create a better culture and capitalize on its positive energy. In their article, “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate … Read More

A key skill to being successful in life is understanding yourself: how you think, why you act certain ways, and what makes you happy or unhappy. A healthy sense of self-awareness is a catalyst for living a fulfilled life. Self-awareness is also essential for the workplace, because every person has a different work style. If you want to maximize your … Read More

As a busy leader or employee, you might wonder: Is having fun actually an important part of work? In our view at ACHIEVE, it is. We recently conducted a 2,400-person survey about what makes a great workplace. In the written answers to the questions, “What about your workplace contributes to making it a great place to work?” and “What about … Read More

A fine dining experience this past weekend showed me just how important it is that staff are interested in what they are doing. My family had been given a gift certificate for a local French restaurant, and we were pleased to have the opportunity to try something new. The restaurant was in a lovely setting in a historical building. My … Read More

We are often told to avoid following the crowd. In the words of Henrik Ibsen, “The majority is never right,” but sometimes a crowd can provide insights an individual cannot. Francis Galton, a brilliant scientist in the early 1900s, demonstrated this point perfectly. He came across a contest at a country fair where fairgoers were invited to guess the weight … Read More

In the workshops I teach, I often talk about hiring for fit with an organizational culture. When I say this, I mean that we should be hiring applicants for the way they connect with our organizational culture and its values. On one level, it is important to hire people whom we can appreciate and enjoy. However, the risk in focusing … Read More