Business Coaching

Last week, both my older daughter, who lives in Atlanta, and I had birthdays. She turned 26 and I turned a number significantly higher. Earlier this week, my younger daughter flew in from Seattle and my wife and I drove in from Augusta so that the four of us could celebrate the recent birthdays. Being with my two daughters (the younger turns 24 next month) caused me to reflect on over a quarter century of being a parent. In an interesting parallel, I became an academic department chair of approximately

A few weeks ago, I was watching a Saturday morning news show when a story came on about a proposed California law to give employees the legal right to ignore non-emergency calls and emails once the workday ends. Though this would be the first such law in the United States, similar laws are more prevalent in Europe and Australia. My first thought upon hearing about this proposed legislation was to consider whether such a law was necessary, practical, and/or enforceable. The discussion about the increase of after-hours email has been

I recently assigned the MBA students in my Operations and Supply Chain Management course a very challenging case study to analyze. As I assigned the case, it brought back memories for me of the first time I assigned this case to a class of very gifted full-time MBA students at a previous institution at which I served as a faculty member. I team-taught the course with another faculty member who called me the day before the case analysis was due to ask me if I had recently checked the “Blackboard”

When I began studying Operations Management (OM) in my Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech in the 1990’s, the discipline was much different. It was often called “Production and Operations Management” which indicated its emphasis on the production or manufacture of goods. While service sector jobs were already outpacing the manufacturing or goods-producing sector jobs by the late 1960’s, the service economy has boomed since while the goods-producing economy has remained fairly stable. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1990’s that the study of OM began putting significant emphasis on how to

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a retreat for the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Foundation, which I am honored to serve on its Board. While there were many highlights to the retreat, one that really stood out to me was a presentation and discussion led by Dr. Mike Comer, President of The Hayes Group. The Hayes Group is a consulting firm that specializes in organizational and individual development, including working with boards and providing executive coaching. Dr. Comer’s time with us included a discussion about what