Healthy Eating at Work

I have an accounting degree and a (dusty) nutrition degree, and sometimes it’s more fun to talk about food instead of financial statements! In order to achieve optimal performance at your job, you want to ensure you are properly fueling your body. A healthy diet can lower the risk of many chronic diseases, elevate mood,Read… Read more »

Eightfold Path to Public Service Enlightenment: Morality

Welcome back for part 2 of this series where we continue the journey down the Eightfold Path to Public Service Enlightenment. I will be building on concepts from last week so if you have not already read part one please do so. Eightfold Path to Public Service Enlightenment: Wisdom In part 1 we covered theRead… Read more »

What’s Missing in Professional Development

When I look at plans for Professional Development, I think we are missing the point. We make it all about the individual shaping his or her future. There should be more to it if one takes the notion, professional development should involve the people who have a say in a person’s career. Organizations say, maybeRead… Read more »

Innovation by the Cup

I don’t drink coffee, but I take my coffee breaks seriously. Coffee fueled an important span of breakthroughs in human thought, according to Steven Johnson in a popular TED talk. Johnson posits that English coffeehouses provided the necessary space and stimulant to drive a sustained era of innovations that began in the mid 17th centuryRead… Read more »

Cultural Diversity and What It Means to IT Managers

Recently I sat in on a meeting between a group of IT developers (contractors) and Federal program managers. Just a routine project review. As I looked around, it struck me that we were really quite a diverse crowd. In the room were people from China, Viet Nam, India, Russia, Somalia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Iran,Read… Read more »

Mic Check: Public Speaking 101

It’s Wednesday and your manager gives you a new task: write and deliver a speech for 100 people at a public event in two days. You will either react in one of two ways: thrilled at the professional development opportunity — or fearful of speaking publicly in front of large crowds. Fear of public speakingRead… Read more »

Surefire Methods for Working Better With Teams

by Mary Schwarz, ICF Interactive Interdisciplinary has always been one of those words that bothered me. Not the actual intent of interdisciplinary – approaching work by involving practitioners from several areas of knowledge – but what it sounds like. So many ways to be disciplined or punished … will it be writing lines, scrubbing gumRead… Read more »

Discover Your Brand, Discover Your Life

“What do you want to order?” my husband always asks me at the Chinese restaurant. After fifteen years going there, we know the three lunch specials among which we rotate but imagine it is always a choice. “Oh, I’ll just have what you’re having,” I always say. Because no matter what you order there, itRead… Read more »