By Tim Maier — Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. They fooled us again.
By Tim Maier — If Henny Youngman was alive today, he’d change the words to his trademark joke, “Take my wife…Pleeeeease!” to something more economical like, “Take my business….Pleeeeease!”
And companies are doing just that – jumping quickly into a corporate marriage for survival and opportunity.
And boy did they jump.
Read more: Shotgun weddings in the corporate world make risky adventures
By Tim Maier — “It’s better to burnout than to fade away,” Kurt Cobain wrote in 1994. Then he shot himself.
Cobain stole the line from his friend Neil Young’s 1979 hit “Rust Never Sleeps.” A year after the song hit the airwaves; John Lennon had come out of a five-year fade away retirement, recharged and ready to rock. When asked about Young’s take on burnout, the former Beatle told Playboy in 1980, “I hate it…I worship people who survive.”
Nearly three decades later after Lennon blasted those who worship burnouts, the corporate world is catching on. Burnout has become a corporate epidemic. No one is worshiping the employee who believes working around the clock is a badge of courage. Burnout has become an unhealthy, deadly behavior that destroys employees and kills companies.
“Too many Americans are beaten down, burned out, and completely de-motivated. And if leaders don’t strive to change that—to create a positive culture that energizes people—there will be dire consequences,” said Jon Gordon, an NFL consultant and author of "The Shark and the Goldfish: Positive Ways to Thrive During Waves of Change." “Culture drives behavior, behavior drives habits, and habits drive results.”
Read more: Outside the box: Better to ‘sustain” than to burnout or fade away
By Tim Maier — In the 1967 flick, “The Graduate,” Mr. McGuire offers one word of advice to Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock — plastics.
