Hopes for a broad deficit-reduction agreement faded on Wednesday as President Obama insisted he had offered Republicans "a fair deal" while Speaker John A. Boehner moved for a House vote as early as Thursday on a scaled-down plan to limit tax increases to yearly incomes of $1 million and up, despite Senate opposition and Mr. Obama’s veto threat. (The New York Times)
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As quick as you can share a heavily filtered photo, Instagram seemingly reverses course on a Terms of Service change that many thought would mean it could sell your photos to advertisers. (Fast Company)
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In the few minutes it takes to read this article, chances are you'll pause to check your phone, answer a text, switch to your desktop to read an email from the boss's assistant, or glance at the Facebook or Twitter messages popping up in the corner of your screen. Off-screen, in your open-plan office, crosstalk about a colleague's preschooler might lure you away, or a co-worker may stop by your desk for a quick question. And bosses wonder why it is tough to get any work done. (Wall Street Journal)
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Netwire will be on hiatus the next couple of weeks for the holidays. We wish you and your families the very best and look forward to providing you with news you can use in the new year.

 

In 2009, Anne F. Ackerley was second in command of a BlackRock Inc. unit that handles client relationships. Today, she's chief marketing officer of the world's largest money manager by assets. One reason: Ms. Ackerley played a pivotal role in BlackRock's employee-resource group for women. (Wall Street Journal)
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Every senior executive would love to have an Allan Taylor on his or her team. And that was the nub of Allan's problem. For a number of years, Allan has reported to a highly visionary manager, and they made a great team. Allan has ensured consistent execution of his boss's strategic initiatives &ndash and is quickly falling into what I call the "first lieutenant syndrome." (Harvard Business Review)
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Are you prepared to handle a mess? In a period of rapid technological and business change, successful executives particularly need the ability to think critically – and to be aware that some of their most cherished assumptions may at any point be challenged or invalidated by changing events. (MIT/Sloan Management Review)
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A preliminary study by University of Chicago and Singapore economists argues that there may be a single explanation that lies behind all of these trends, one related to the very slow-moving social identities of men and women and how these identities collide within a marriage or romantic partnership. Though in 2012 women are better educated and higher-skilled than men, in identity terms we’re still stuck in a 1950s world in which "men work in the labor force and women work in the home." (Slate)
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The World Bank has raised its growth forecast for China, saying stimulus measures and approval of infrastructure projects will help boost growth. It added that the pick-up in factory output and investment "suggested that China's economy was bottoming out". (BBC News)
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Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday Italy would be forced to leave the euro zone unless the European Central Bank gets more powers to ensure lower borrowing costs. (CNBC)
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Shawn Rux took over as principal of MS 53, a New York City middle school, last year. At the time, 50 or 60 kids were absent every day. You could understand why they stayed away: The school was chaos. Twenty-two teachers had quit, the entire office staff had quit, and hundreds of kids had been suspended. The school was given a grade of F from the city's department of education. (NPR)
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Massachusetts, home to America's best schools and best-educated workforce, has seen income inequality soar. Why? The poor are losing an academic arms race with the rich. (The Atlantic)
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Access the member benefits page at NBMBAA.org for special pricing offers available with your NBMBAA Membership. Current discounts include preferred pricing from Dell and Ford. NEW: Chrysler Affiliate Rewards gets you preferred pricing on the Chrysler family of vehicles, including Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat and Ram.
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Senior guard Garvey Young (Washington, D.C.) of the Quinnipiac University men's basketball team was recently selected to the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) Scholarship Program, announced on Thursday, December 14, 2012 by the Greater Hartford Chapter of the NBMBAA. Young, who is in his first year of a demanding MBA program at Quinnipiac, was one of four individuals to earn the prestigious award. (Quinnipiac Bobcats)
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It is one of the chief tech conundrums of the decade: people are flocking away from desktops and laptops and toward mobile devices, but the mobile-ad economy is terrible. Selling ads on smartphones, in particular, is difficult, and they sell for much less than ads served to traditional computers, which already sell for much less than print and broadcast ads. Google thinks it might have a partial solution. (Fortune)
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With the advent of smartphones we've become used to being constantly connected, even when we're on the road or on vacation. But now a growing number of hotels are adding "digital detox" packages to their roster of offerings. (CNN)
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Thirty-year-old Alisha Mustafa spent years working at low-paying restaurant jobs. The unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent in her hometown of Bloomington, Ind. "I've worked it all in this town," she says. "I've worked for so many restaurants, and last year was my year from hell in the industry." (NPR)
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Failure – and the importance of failing quickly and often – is a trendy topic. Learning how to overcome obstacles and setbacks is in fact incredibly important, but at the same time failure can also be incredibly painful, both financially and emotionally. Lessons learned aside, when you own a business and it's your money and your future on the line, failure sucks. That's why no one sets out to fail--unless, of course, they do one of these things. (Inc.)
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Jason Fried is a founder and CEO of 37signals, a software company based in Chicago. Fried also treats 37signals as something of a laboratory for innovative workplace practices--such as a recent experiment in shortening the summer workweek to just four days. We caught up with Fried to learn how employees are like fossil fuels, how a business can be like a cancer, and how one of the entrepreneurs he admires most is his cleaning lady. (Fast Company)
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Early on in the Libor scandal, there was a sense that the systematic rigging of a key lending rate was a victimless crime. Wednesday's Justice Department charges against UBS should finally dispel that notion. It was assumed that if Libor rates had been pushed lower, as appeared to be the case, borrowers would have benefited. (Fortune)
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A leading tracker of shopper traffic on Wednesday cut its seasonal sales forecast, saying the holiday selling period would have "a different tone" in the aftermath of the school shootings in Connecticut, superstorm Sandy and as talks drag on over avoiding the fiscal cliff. (MarketWatch)
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As many as 100 million U.S. households, or two-thirds of the total, may not be able to file their tax returns until at least late March 2013 if Congress doesn’t reach an end-of-year budget agreement, according to the Internal Revenue Service. (Bloomberg)
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As rising tuition continues to put college out of many students’ reach, some schools are experimenting with the kinds of pay-as-you-go payment plans more common to phone and cable bills. (MarketWatch)
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Cerberus Capital Management's decision to sell its ownership stake in gun maker Freedom Group is just the beginning. We've had the guns versus butter debate for decades, but not as deliberately as we should have, particularly outside the context of government spending. (Fortune)
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UBS has agreed to pay a fine of $1.5 billion to authorities and plead guilty to a felony count of wire fraud, the most recent developments in a far-reaching probe into how banks manipulated interest rates leading up to the financial crisis. Two former traders were also charged with conspiracy in a complaint unsealed Wednesday, the first people charged criminally in the Libor scandal. (Los Angeles Times)
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In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government's help. And the rich are getting richer because of it. The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 - a ratio of 54 to 1. (The Atlantic)
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Probably one of the biggest mistakes leaders make at work is managing for harmony. When confronted with personnel conflicts, mistakes in judgment, differences of opinion or straight on failure, too often we try to manage the situation by bringing about agreement, order and "peacefulness." At first glance that seems to be appropriate – even obvious. Who wouldn't want some calmness instead of frustration and agreement instead of discord? But more often than not, what is really needed when managing workplace conflict is courage, not harmony. (Fast Company)
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Years ago, I was involved with a firm that experimented with teaching leadership principles to elementary school children. We were introducing the same skills to 3rd and 4th graders that we teach managers in large corporations. These nine- and ten-year-olds had no trouble understanding such concepts as the importance of preserving self-confidence in your colleagues or the dangers of focusing on personalities. In fact, they lost no time in applying the principles to their parents (who are, after all, their immediate supervisors). (Harvard Business Review)
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The top ranking in frequent-flier programs has long been considered the privilege of elite road warriors – people who buy expensive tickets, spend their working lives traveling and always get upgraded and pampered. (Wall Street Journal)
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