Articles

Focus on Mentoring as Baby Boomers Near Retirement

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. We are facing a new reality as the economy improves: acceleration in the retirement of the baby boom generation. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants published a study in 2011 that found that the average baby boomer was postponing retirement for four to six years. Starting this year, it is estimated that 10,000 U.S. citizens a day will turn sixty-five, the traditional age of retirement. As the economy continues to improve, the baby boomers who postponed retirement when their 401k took a hit in 2008-2009 are going to start to create an influx of retirements over the next few...
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Accelerated Mentoring

Mentoring is one of the most powerful ways to advance your career. Most successful people can point to a mentor who helped them at a critical point in their careers. But, getting started with a mentor can be a slow process. Join Rik Nemanick for this webinar on Accelerated Mentoring that will help you maximize your mentoring partnership and make it more powerful. Who should attend: This webinar is for mentors or protégés who want to accelerate the impact of their mentoring partnerships. The webinar will help both those in formal mentoring programs and those who are looking for informal...
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Making The Role of IT in Your Organization More Strategic

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. I was recently having lunch with a friend who works for XIOLINK who was telling me about how companies like hers (that provides managed hosting, cloud computing solutions, etc.) were enabling their customers to transform the role of internal IT in their companies. By moving a lot of their data and applications to “the cloud,” an organization’s internal IT team can shift their focus away from putting out fires and constantly managing server hardware to adding value to the core business such as application development or implementing a new ordering system. In other words, they will...
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The Mentor’s Way Rule #1: Lead by Following

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. This post is the first in the series The Mentor’s Way, a set of guides for mentors who want to bring out the best in others. The old aphorism, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” is the foundation of the second rule of mentoring. Many a mentor has fallen into the subtle trap of driving the mentoring process, only to reach a point of disappointment and frustration when the protégé’s energy and enthusiasm begins to wane. The drive that was there at the beginning starts to give way to other...
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