Wednesday

The BK Foundation

BK Foundation Passes Major Milestones

The Berrett-KoehlerFoundation recently completed its first year since it was incorporated.  And it has already reached several major milestones.

First, the Foundation received official IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status as a public charity.  This means that donations, transfers, and gifts to the Foundation are tax deductible.  We think that it is a good sign that the Foundation received this status more rapidly and cleanly than is the norm for most organizations that apply.

Second, this month the Foundation hired its first permanent executive director, Marielle Amrhein, who is a 32-year-old young leader herself and who has extensive experience both in nonprofit organization leadership and youth leadership development.  Our thanks go to BK author Jesse Stoner, who, as interim executive director, was the driving force in leading the Foundation from initial idea to functioning organization.

Third, the Foundation held its first public event on July 19 in Oakland, California.  This BK Leadership Exchange brought together 30 young and emerging leaders with 30 BK authors and other experienced leaders in interactive learning and practicing of new leadership approaches. 

Please check out this Foundation news story.


Thank you to many members of the BK community who have supported the Berrett-Koehler Foundation with your donations and volunteer efforts.

Steve Piersanti

Tuesday

The Eight Types of Office Coworkers No One Has Time For Any More


It's the New Year, and these people are already driving you nuts. They think they're helpful or even role models in some way, but they're just plain annoying, distracting, and in the way when you are trying to get stuff done. They are the enemies of execution.

Maximize your time and efficacy by avoiding the distractions from these eight types of people:

1. The Grammar Nazis: Oh, yes, it's thoroughly amazing how these lit-wonks know all about subordinating and coordinating conjunctions. Actually, no, it's annoying, and no one else cares but other people who also  compensate for their total lack of creativity by nitpicking others' work. They are the institutional killers of ideas.

2. The Pontificators: Pontificators could state their point concisely and directly, but why do that when you can overexplain and explicate? Why use five words when fifty could be accommodated? What these people don't realize is that after the first five minutes, they may as well be reading a recipe because no one is listening.

3. The Keyboard Punishers: These people believe not in typing or even tapping keys on the keyboard but in assaulting them and bashing them into submission. This habit wouldn't be so bad if everyone couldn't hear the loud squeaky death rattles of keys dying.

4. The Mass Email Forwarders: You know the type -- he or she will send a message that contains up to thirty other messages as forwards along with a general question such as, "What do you advise?" And you have to dig through the e-trail all the way to the bottom of the chain to know what the email is all about.

5. The No-Whisperers: Some people are unable to whisper, so they carry on side conversations in any meeting at full volume. Often, the people the no-whisperer is talking to remain aware that everyone else in the room is glaring at them, but they are helpless to say anything. If you don't know any of these people, you are likely one of them.

6. The Moody Bluers: These naysayers walk around in perpetually bad moods. They think they are serving a vital role by challenging conventional thinking but fail to realize they are so predictable that people stopped listening to them years ago. Moodly Bluers think of themselves as curmudgeonly and lovable, but everyone else just thinks they're a pain.

7. The Sunshiners: Proof that too much of a good thing is bad for you, sunshiners are those always-happy people -- you know the ones. You secretly wish something horrible would happen to them just so they'd shut up about their "loving life" attitude.

8. The Ugly Laughers: Laughter is always a nice thing to hear -- unless you hear it all the time. From the same person. Who's fifteen cubicles away. Worse yet, ugly laughers have a laugh like a barnyard animal in heat. Laughter can be the best medicine, but coming from certain people, it can be an ice pick to the eardrums.

Any ideas for others?