Alan Weiss' The Uncomfortable Truth

In dealing with a global community of thousands—and hundreds of thousands who have read my books—I’m able to keep my finger on the pulse of the profession and its clients. I’m sharing in this podcast some of the repetitive discussions and challenges that are extant internationally. For example, “remote” now rules. It’s often the default interaction, and often represents more value, not less. (A huge amount of time and money are saved.) However, leaders are not sure how to deal with combinations of remote, onsite, and hybrid employees. They are frustrated that they’re not getting their “40 hours” of productivity from them, when, in fact, even employees in the office physically are not providing 40 hours of productivity! This goes back to “Scientific Management” and Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early 20th Century, the first time-and-motion consultant. The problem is that he fudged his numbers and never factored in fatigue and boredom. Supply chains are changing, but they’re changing from global (do we rea

Connie is a former anchor on two major networks. She has moved from broadcasting to coaching, consulting, and speaking with remarkable ease. She’s created her own psychometric testing instrument, and has clients on six continents. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her for many years, and her innovation about, and intelligence in, leadership and executive presence is creating state-of-the art interventions. We talk about the relationship of charisma, presence, and leadership. She tells us about how she became engaged in places such as Kuwait and Dubai, dealing with inclusion and equity.  Connie raises the issue of those who think they’re influential but really are not. (My term is “legends in their own zip code”). We focus on the differences among manipulation and actual, long-term, mutually supportive influence.  I ask her about the effectiveness of leaders in remote and hybrid environments and about the changes necessary intergenerationally. When I asked about a leader who exemplifies her beliefs abo

Well, is this a further step in the dehumanization of civilization, or a Jonestown Kool Aid romp, or another Y2K flop? When you put a variety of documents or fictional passages through the system, I find they are seldom improved and often seriously injured. In some cases, such as in instructions or directions, I think there is huge potential. But I examine in this podcast the downsides of people jumping on this latest “bandwagon” amid the pet rocks and hula hoops. Are we eager to “homogenize” writing? Or eager to duplicate with grammar what we’ve done with math, which only a few people seem to be able to do in their heads anymore. (I fall down laughing at people who can’t figure out a tip in a restaurant, so that the restaurants overcome this by suggesting percentages to tip and the amounts represented therein.) What does this mean for dissertations or term papers? What does it mean for book proposals or reviews? Are we going to live in a world of automated writing, automated math, autonomous cars, and sy

I’ve been staying at the Lotte Palace Hotel in New York City since it was solely “The Palace” and run by the legendary Leona Helmsley. It’s ideally situated on Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st, right across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and in easy walking distance to all Broadway plays and only about 300 good restaurants. Becky Hubbard has been the general manager for a dozen years amidst her 20 in the hospitality industry. We speak here about staffing and sustaining a highly supportive and polite work force; of the rebound since Covid; of international tourism rebounding; and of a day that had her walking home around eight at night, while her daughter tracks her location on her cell phone. She presides over a 900+ room, elite hotel which she calls her “inn” and has just overseen a $140 million renovation. We talk here about her preference for dealing directly with guests and the importance of the “first see, last see” front door staff. We discuss the dramatic rise in hotel charges to guests (in Fl

I recall walking out of a church in the twilight in San Diego and thinking it was horrible that store owners and residents had left their garbage on the sidewalks. As I came closer I realized these were homeless people who were being stepped over by pedestrians. There are almost 600,000 homeless people in the US according to 2022 statistics, and about 20 percent of them in California alone. They form communities for protection, but also suffer from crime, disease, addiction, and brutality. We have no cogent plan to deal with homelessness despite who is in political office. People buying homes in Los Angeles are often faced with the difficulty of finding one for a decent price with the reality that a few hundred yards away, beneath on overpass, are scores of homeless people, often violent and often ill. There are the mentally ill, who are protected from institutionalization by laws that actually place them in greater danger. There are the truly dispossessed, who have suffered from job loss, inflation, hous

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