I have a tendency to stockpile magazines so I can read during flights. This time of year is conference season, which tends to be my busiest with a lot of travel from September through the end of the year.

I don’t know any time when you could become obsolete or irrelevant quicker than today. The world is moving faster than ever. New technologies are changing the way we work and live our lives. We have to stay current with trends and be willing to change regularly.

It seems like a simple enough question. “What companies should we benchmark ourselves against?”

This question was asked in a Facebook group I belong to. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Benchmarking is the process of comparing something (i.e. process, performance) against what someone else does. The process of choosing that “someone else” to compare yourself to isn’t always obvious.

At one of my training sessions recently, we had a discussion about being a first-time supervisor. While the group had a tremendous amount of management experience, everyone recognized how hard it can be in that very first supervisory role. Driving home after the session, it got me thinking – what advice would I have wanted when I first became a supervisor?

I’ve always worked in organizations where this time of year was budget time. We spent hours in meetings talking about the goals we wanted to accomplish in the upcoming year (and how to fund those projects.)