VOLUNTEERS Volunteers are valuable and even critical assets to nonprofit organizations. If you work with volunteers, you also know that sometimes managing volunteers can be a real pain in the assets, if you know what I mean. The Do Good Institute, a part of the University of Maryland, creates a...

  HELLO? HELLO?   Every time I hear Adele sing the first word of her 2015 hit, “Hello,” I think of walking through the tunnel beneath Kennywood Blvd that forms the entrance into Kennywood Park just outside of Pittsburgh. As a kid, I would hope the tunnel was empty as my family made our way int...

  ALARM CLOCK   I am an extrovert. This past Valentine’s Day marked the 20th anniversary of my wife saying “Yes” after I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. I was in San Jose, CA, for a work event, and being apart was a bummer. Fortunately, some of my colleagues were also away fr...

  A THING FOR THIS   I was standing on the side of my friend’s driveway while he was taking apart my motorcycle in order to make some repairs. As he lay on his back, he turned to me and said, “Hey Matt, can you hand me that thing for this?” He pointed vaguely to a pile of “things” while holdi...

  THE WORLD OF EMAILS   Biographers of historical figures comb through letters written to, from, and about their subject to develop a robust understanding of them. I love reading biographies, and one I particularly liked was Titan by Rob Chernow. The paperback is 832 pages about the life of Jo...

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE BOSS Here are some sample conversations some of you may be able to relate to. Conversation 1: My boss: “Okay. I know last year we held an event to make emergency meals for 10,000 people. This year, we’re going to make meals for at least 100,000 people.” My brain: “This ...

  A HUNT FOR LEADERSHIP TIPS   When my daughter was little, I would read her the book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, multiple times per week (once she got over her fear of it being about bears). In the book, a parent takes their three kids on a b...

  BULLET POINTS VS STORY   Once upon a time, a friend told me that the career they were hoping for was to be a technical writer. Four years of English after completing a rigorous high school AP class loaded with the most amazing prose from William Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie and this person...

  THE WHO OF PUBLIC SPEAKING   Over the last 20 years in the marketplace and in churches, I have had the opportunity (misfortune?) to sit through thousands of talks, and a few times I have delivered talks. I’ll admit that some of those were to the chagrin of the audience. I’m still growing i...

  MEET RAMBO   One of the so-called complications on my Apple Watch shows me the current temperature outside, and it comes in handy when I’m in a Zoom room and someone else in the meeting asks me about the weather where I live. My typical workday routine has me in my near-windowless basement ...