Tonkin to You!

One of my favorite parts of academic life is “spreading the gospel” of good business and communications practices beyond the classroom. I recently got to spend some quality time with a group of managers from a regional manufacturing facility. While being some of the most fun and friendly people I’ve ever worked with, they pulled no punches when it came to their biggest workplace challenge: Communications. They described scenarios in which the newest hires, primarily Gen-Z-ers, would avoid interpersonal communications at any cost. This lack of ability or willingness to speak up had produced situations where employees would stand at a malfunctioning machine and say nothing. Production had literally come to a halt multiple times because young employees simply would not let someone know there was a problem. On a daily basis, I face Gen-Z in the safe confines of a college classroom, but such a phenomenon was something I had never considered. I had (naively) assumed that a strong organiz...

  This past week, my trusty companion Willis and I stole away to one our go-to regional hikes, Canoe Creek State Park. While not as isolated as my favorite woodland destinations, Canoe Creek is a beautiful and easy-to-reach patch of PA nature. With the first major storm on the horizon, I sensed it might be my last chance to get some late-fall, snow-free hiking. I rediscovered my love of the outdoors back in 2020, during the early days of the COVID pandemic. Despite all the terrible and ongoing troubles brought on by this virus (medical, social, and political), COVID brought me back to a type of grounding I had totally forgotten about in my life, namely the value of unplugging. Since this rediscovery, Willis has been my constant companion for every sojourn I’ve taken into the beautiful woods of my home state. There’s something particularly special about getting a final hike in before the snow falls, particularly if you’ve been visiting a trail year-round. From the birth and flow...

  This past week, my wife and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. A decade. One tenth of a century. According to brides.com, the traditional “metal” of this occasion is aluminum. While not as dignified as silver or flashy as gold, aluminum has a beauty all its own. The substance is flexible, durable, and adaptable, all elements of a good union between people that looks to stand the test of time! As humans, we are wired to mark time. From birthdays to graduation dates, we count down how far it is until something will happen or after something has happened. Like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs, these dates in time either help us find the path forward or to go back to where we were in the first place if required. Our online world certainly has made such forward and backward motion easier. From digital photo archives to searchable Facebook posts, we can take a walk backward in time with a few clicks of the button. My wife, who’s walking in her mom’s footsteps as the photog...

When I was growing up, I remember hearing people describing men "of a certain age." The phrase was used with a hushed tone...a muted phrasing that somehow implied respect and insult at the same time. There was reverence co-existing with sadness, gratitude for the longevity the person had achieved along with poor prospects for long term survival. It was like listening to someone talking about a friend who had finally scored the girl of his dreams and was happier than ever....but that she was 20 years younger than him. You could almost hear someone say:  "I'm glad he's happy but it will never last." Now, I'm a man "of a certain age"...49 to be exact...and I am also happier than ever...in my marriage, work, and artistic expression. And, as in the analogy, I also know that time cannot stand still. This age cannot last forever. In moments of reflection and activity, silence and noise, I've realized that middle-age is the "sweet spot" o...

  There are days when turning on the news feels like taking a hammer to your own forehead. The economy is bad. Gas prices continue climbing while our retirements dwindle. A war threatens to spread to Europe while our biggest adversaries seek to expand their power and global influence. Here at home, our politicians seem to have established yelling as the new baseline of conversation, and are more concerned with "getting the other guy" than actually governing.  Sometimes, it seems like we are a binary country. You're red or blue. A one or a zero. A liberal or a conservative. You either want all guns to be banned or you believe everyone should have their own arsenal. We must be more divided than ever... Except we aren't. We, however, are being convinced that we are by people who benefit from such rhetoric...and we're falling for it.  The old expression in journalism was "if it bleeds, it leads." Directly, people are drawn to bad news. Plane crashes and bomb...

This past week, a co-worker of mine passed away. A professor beloved by both his students and colleagues, he died suddenly, leaving behind a wife, children, and hundreds of people whose lives he had made a better place through his daily interactions and insights about the world around us. My friend taught a wide range of classes, a man who helped students figure out everything from intro to philosophy to ethics, and he was liked by everyone. In all of my years working at my university, I have never heard a negative word said about him. His curiosity, positivity, and kind demeanor seemed to put everyone else at ease. It's difficult to think of my school without him. As an academic advisor, I could always tell my students "it's time for you to take business ethics with (my friend); he's a great teacher! You'll get a lot out of that class!" When I'd hit on ethics in my intro level business classes or upper-level management work, students would often tell me ...

"I, I'm a one way motorway I'm the one that drives away Then follows you back home I, I'm a street light shining I'm a wild light blinding bright Burning off and on It's times like these you learn to live again It's times like these you give and give again It's times like these you learn to love again It's times like these time and time again" --Times Like These, by Foo Fighters These are tough times. Inflation is turning common goods to luxuries and outpacing wage growth. Gas prices are higher than ever while faith in elected officials has gone the opposite direction. A proxy war is in progress between Russia and the U.S. while an energy crisis threatens to make this year's winter colder for so many people. Wait...is it 2022 or 1982?  Yes, we've seen it all before. Between the industrial burnout and stagflation and the shadow war that put U.S.-backed rebels up against the Russians in the hills of Afghanistan, it seems like a time machi...