Tausi Insider

Photo : fizkes ( Shutterstock ) Anyone wanting to take the step to becoming a boss can get caught up in a familiar loop: Every job description they look at requires past management experience. But how do they get the experience if no one will hire them without it? If you’re looking at management jobs outside of your current company where no one knows you or has seen your performance, you certainly are facing an uphill battle. Leaders who are hiring are looking for some sort of proof that a candidate is right for the job; when they don’t know a candidate, they naturally look for past experience. In these cases, if you don’t have it, you’re very likely to get passed up—don’t waste your time applying. Instead, your best bet is to be promoted internally. In these cases, crossing over from an individual contributor to a leader requires positioning yourself for the job. It’s not about writing your resume so that your project work sounds like management. Rather, it’s about relationships...

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bump elbows after the federal government unveiled COVID-19 spending plans. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Jason Clemens and Jake Fuss are economists with the Fraser Institute. An Auditor-General’s report recently cited billions in questionable spending in Ottawa’s management of handouts related to COVID-19. But while the report certainly raises questions (again) about competence, it should not mislead Canadians into believing that such failure is unique to the Trudeau government. We’ve seen much of the same from previous administrations. This is a larger problem of systemic government failure . This new assessment is damning indeed. Auditor-General Karen Hogan found $4.6-billion in overpayments to ineligible recipients, and recommended that the government investigate the nature of another $27.4-billion in spending. The AG also criticized Ottawa for failing to require social insurance numbers for workers in fi...

Photo : fizkes ( Shutterstock ) When employee morale is low and teamwork is lacking, well-intending bosses and HR folks often think the solution is to have a “team- building” session. They think the root of the issue must be that staff don’t know each other well, don’t understand each other’s “styles, ” and if they did, they would work better together. Work is stopped, money is spent, and everyone is scheduled to attend a team- building session— or what I sometimes call, forced fun. This is when personality tests, or “style” assessments, like the DISC Profile, Myers Briggs Type Indicator and others of the like are often used to help people understand each other better with a goal of improving teamwork. Many of these assessments are grounded in good behavioral science. They require completion of an assessment and then, a report is generated that describes a person’s preferences and tendencies for communication, thinking, and use of energy. Some also identify strengths, weaknes...

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bump elbows after the federal government unveiled COVID-19 spending plans. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Jason Clemens and Jake Fuss are economists with the Fraser Institute. An Auditor-General’s report recently cited billions in questionable spending in Ottawa’s management of handouts related to COVID-19. But while the report certainly raises questions (again) about competence, it should not mislead Canadians into believing that such failure is unique to the Trudeau government. We’ve seen much of the same from previous administrations. This is a larger problem of systemic government failure . This new assessment is damning indeed. Auditor-General Karen Hogan found $4.6-billion in overpayments to ineligible recipients, and recommended that the government investigate the nature of another $27.4-billion in spending. The AG also criticized Ottawa for failing to require social insurance numbers for workers in fi...