I switched jobs for the first time at age 49. Well, technically, I had several jobs between graduate school and then, but they were all at one employer, a small Midwestern nonprofit that published a monthly magazine and ran educational programs. By the time I left that company in the spring of 2017, it was […]

I met Dave at a residential behavioral health center in Arizona. An older man with stories to match his years, he was great with the clients and even better with our young coworkers. One story he shared has stuck with me. He had been working with a particularly unpleasant young man for several months. Let’s […]

After years of tumult and uncertainty, major parts of Steve’s life were coming together nicely. For more than four years, the website designer had held a staff position at a prominent management consulting firm. Invitations to speak on digital trends at industry conferences flowed to him. Off of work hours, the 43-year-old completed a steady […]

“We really need an office space for our team.” It’s not something I ever expected to hear from our COO, Megan Hyatt Miller. After all, she loved working from home as much as any of us. I had recently stepped out of my role as Michael Hyatt’s Executive Assistant into the new role of Senior […]

Michael Hyatt & Co. recently landed on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America for the second year in a row. That’s a huge honor, and it represents how fast our team of high-achievers moves from one project to the next. Managing a team of high-achievers in a high-growth company […]

Having your files stored in the cloud is one of the most powerful tools in your business when it’s done right. If not, you’ll find yourself and your team spending unreasonable amounts of time tracking things down. As with most teams that I work with, Michael Hyatt & Co was growing fast when they reached […]

Rumors at work can be surprisingly destructive. Rumors undermine the confidence of an organization, both within and without; encourage infighting, backbiting, and other HR department fever dreams; deep six morale; make strategic hiring like extracting wisdom teeth; scare off would-be investors; and tank stock prices. What start as whispers can build to whirlwind force. Because […]

Drama queens (and kings!) are bad for business. They disrupt your workplace by gossiping, backbiting, exaggerating every situation, justifying their bad behavior, and blaming others for their failures. Their behavior and their very presence compromises the teamwork that you and your colleagues need to succeed. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said that they spend 3-to-6 hours […]

A chain of command, or command hierarchy, is the relationship between personnel in terms of responsibility and authority. It’s a ready-made structure for delegation of authority to accomplish the organization’s mission. That’s true in most large organizations and broadly applicable, though examples here will be drawn from my experience in the military. In the military’s […]

We’ve all been there: a project manager or supervisor asks you to do something you disagree with for some reason. Perhaps the assignment in question takes up too much time or maybe the proposed strategy doesn’t work with the overall mission. In any scenario where employee and supervisor are in disagreement, the situation is ripe […]