Thanksgiving is a time for appreciation of one’s blessings and for reflection. As I reflect back on 2017, I am incredibly thankful for my faith, my family, and my friends in this challenging year. I am also thankful for my work and for my career at an organization where I will celebrate 18 years of…

As I write this blog (from the local Starbucks), many parts of APQC’s hometown of Houston are still working to recover from Hurricane Harvey, an incredibly destructive Category 4 storm that hit Texas and Louisiana in late August 2017. This storm was considered a flood disaster, dumping a total of…

Like other “Thronies,” I have been eagerly awaiting the premier of Season 7 of Game of Thrones (GOT) which occurred this past Sunday, July 16. But, perhaps unlike other Thronies, I didn’t actually start watching GOT at all until several months ago, necessitating cramming in content from the first…

Earlier this month I spent a week at the Gulf Coast Symposium on HR Issues, held May 10-12, 2017 at NRG Center in my home town of Houston, Texas. The session bills itself as “the largest regional conference for HR Professionals on the Gulf Coast, with more than 2,100 practitioners, presenters and…

Are you a dog lover like I am? I was very intrigued to read a recent article in SHRM’s HR Magazine about the benefits of bringing dogs to the office, something that I certainly am in favor of but our HR director, not so much. According to the recent article from SHRM, a policy of allowing employees…

Perhaps largely due to the nature of their business, professional services firms have high expectations, and consequently some struggles, when it comes to the demarcation of work and home life. Work tends to be ubiquitous, and employees often struggle with guilt if they take advantage of benefits…

In my not so recent past, I was a divorced single mother, working full-time, and going part-time to a local state university for my Ph.D. That was hard. The word that I used for my life during those days was satisficing – It generally means you do the minimum on all fronts to get by. Today,…

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to this organizational development (OD) technique called Open Space Technology, originally created by Harrison Owen in the late 1980’s. Open Space is essentially a meeting facilitation technique that is much less scripted, and much more, well, open, than…