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Here are five choice articles from the business press to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about "disposable" workers, engagement, Carol Bartz, Alan Mulally, and "getting under the tank."

From Business Week: The Disposable Worker
"Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one's job is secure. How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary."

Wally's Comment: Every time I think we've turned the corner and begun to understand that "People are people and parts is parts," I read an article like this one. The concept of imagining people as parts to be plugged into your well-engineered machine when needed and left in the parts bin when they're not should be a relic of the "Scientific Management" era. But it's not. It may work if you don't need people to bring their brains to work, and if their knowledge and relationships don't matter. I just can't think of a business where that's true.

From Workforce Management: Employee Engagement: Define It, Measure It and Put It to Work in Your Organizations
"Research by APQC, one of the leading proponents of process and performance improvement, has yielded key insights into what engagement is, how it can be measured and how it can be integrated into organizational culture."

Wally's Comment: As I wrote in "Why Engagement May be the Best Management Voodoo Ever," the biggest single problem with employee engagement is that there are at least as many definitions of it as there are consultants wanting to sell you a magic potion to make it happen. APQC, in its very engineering way, suggests that you should define engagement for yourself in a way that you will be able to measure it.

From Bloomberg: Yahoo CEO Gives Herself B-Minus Grade in First Year
"Carol Bartz gives herself a B-minus in her first year as chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., saying she could have moved faster to reorganize the company and strike a Web-search agreement with Microsoft Corp."

Wally's Comment: Carol Bartz is a CEO who expresses her thoughts and judgments clearly and helpfully. In this article she reviews her first year on the job at Yahoo, the company that seemed unable to define itself before she came along. For an idea of what her standards are, you may also want to read her recent interview in the Economist titled "Leadership in the information age."

From the NY Times: Ford’s Bet: It’s a Small World After All
"Yet three years into his tenure as chief executive — and with a host of still nettlesome challenges awaiting him — Mr. Mulally has thus far proved to be the unifying figure that Ford has needed for decades."

Wally's Comment: When Alan Mulally took over at Ford in 2006, I thought he was a competent executive who would run aground on the rocks and shoals of Ford's culture. I was wrong. After three years we can say two things. First, he's done a great job and led some major changes. Second, he just might pull this off.

For more perspective on this great article, check out a NY Times interview with Mulally from September 2009 and a piece from Business Week, "The Outsider at Ford," from March of the same year.

From Forbes Thought Leaders: "He's under the tank, sir" - Lead by Example
"My platoon was out in the field on training exercises. We had been out there for about two weeks so we all smelled kind of "ripe" at that point. One of the more senior officers in my battalion came to my unit's area to see how things were going. This "gentleman" personified the term - he was an "officer's officer" (versus being a "soldier's officer" which we'll explore in a moment)."

Wally's Comment: This was first posted in 2007, but I just discovered it and it's good enough to break my "only from the last week" rule. If you are a boss, anywhere and at any level, make this one a must-read. You may want to bookmark it.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.