Category: Oswald Letter

Dan Oswald, CEO of Simplify Compliance, writes about management, leadership, and the workplace. Occasional guest articles are written by other leaders and C-Suite executives from BLR. 

A Beginner’s Guide to Finding Your Work Passion

This edition of The Oswald Letter is a guest post from Elizabeth Petersen, Project Director for Simplify Compliance. I’ve recently started reading Reddit semiregularly, and one of my most-visited subreddits is r/careerguidance. While the questions submitted range from the very specific (“I’m a history major with two years of work experience at a museum. What […]

equity

The Case for Diversity

This edition of The Oswald Letter is a guest post from Elizabeth Petersen, Project Director for Simplify Compliance. While few American businesses self-report on diversity data, workplace discrimination and inclusion are near-daily topics in the media.

Leading, Unofficially

This edition of The Oswald Letter is a guest post from Elizabeth Petersen, Project Director for Simplify Compliance. For most of us, the path to becoming a leader starts years before an official leadership title and a team of employees are granted.

Embrace the Speed of Change

We live in a world that is changing rapidly. It’s a reality that we all recognize and must accept. Driven by rapid advances in technology, we’re living in a world in which information is at our fingertips 24/7, we’re constantly connected to the world around us, and a task that once took hours or days […]

Act like you own the place

by Dan Oswald I was at a conference last week with a group of senior executives and company owners. Not surprisingly, one of the topics the group discussed was how to identify and attract top talent. It was suggested that a common trait in the best employees is that they act like owners. That might […]

Know Your Employees’ Work Languages

Note from Dan Oswald: A colleague and I, on occasion, discuss various leadership or management approaches. It was more than a year ago when he floated the concept of “work languages” during one of our conversations. I told him that I agreed with his overall premise, as I believe that a leader must understand what […]

Focus on Your Employees’ Needs Before Your Own

by Dan Oswald On Sunday, I heard someone speak about servant leadership. I was struck by how appropriate it was that he chose that topic the day before we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King, a man who dedicated his life to civil rights, once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent […]

May the Force (of Failure) Be with You

This edition of The Oswald Letter is a guest post from Elizabeth Petersen, Simplify Compliance’s executive vice president of revenue and strategy. by Elizabeth Petersen Let’s get three things out of the way: I love Star Wars. I also love Star Trek. I’m only moderately embarrassed by admitting this.