The boy never thought he’d be able to communicate with others. He developed a stutter that was so severe, he chose not to speak at all. As a matter of fact, he remained functionally mute for eight years--until a high school English teacher took notice of the boy’s gift for poetry. That teacher forced him to recite every day in class to improve his confidence and his public speaking ability. That teacher’s success is evident, as you’ll readily admit if you’ve ever heard James Earl Jones intone "This is CNN" on the cable news channel of the same name. (Fast Company)
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NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health about their lives. One of the areas respondents were asked about was their perceptions of their financial status. (NPR)
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In business and in life, the most critical choices we make relate to people. Yet being a good judge of people is difficult. How do we get better at sizing up first impressions, at avoiding hiring mistakes, at correctly picking (and not missing) rising stars? The easy thing to do is focus on extrinsic markers – academic scores, net worth, social status, job titles. (Harvard Business Review)
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Ben Jealous was appointed president and CEO of the NAACP at a time when its membership was in decline. Jealous, however, has spent the last five years reversing that decline, increasing the number of donors and focusing on current hot-button issues like elimination of the death penalty. What's important, he said during a Wharton leadership lecture, is to "sit with people whom you disagree with 99 out of 100 times and find the one thing you can agree on." (Knowledge@Wharton)
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Warning: Your personal life may disrupt your job search. A former finance chief of a heavy-equipment maker failed to get hired this spring after a hospitality business discovered he had filed for personal bankruptcy in 2000. An outside prospect for chief operating officer of a professional-services firm was knocked out of the running when the firm learned her husband had pled guilty to union payoffs. A man seeking a senior post at a real-estate concern got turned down after management learned he had sexually harassed the wife of a prior business partner. (The Wall Street Journal)
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After promising your boss you would complete an important assignment on time, you realize you're behind and it's going to be late. You unintentionally leave a colleague out of the loop on a joint project, causing him or her to feel frustrated and a bit betrayed. On the subway, you aren't paying attention and accidentally spill hot coffee all over a stranger's expensive suit. It's time for a mea culpa. (Harvard Business Review)
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It happens all the time: you're trying to solve a tough problem and you get stuck. You rack your brain but the answer just won't come. Asking around doesn't help. Neither does the internet. Bummer. We all know what that's like. It's damn frustrating. But when it happens to your career, it's far worse, especially if you're one of those people who expect a lot of themselves. (Inc.)
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African-Americans fought for years to enter professions that were dominated by white people, like medicine, business and law. Now, experts say some of those gains have leveled off since the recession. Guest host Celeste Headlee speaks with The New York Times' Nelson Schwartz, and lawyer Lisa Tatum, about why minorities struggle to gain ground in elite professions. (Audio and transcript) (NPR)
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Anyone who has hiring responsibilities in 2013 would like to think that the U.S. is tackling diversity head-on. But how far have American companies really come? We have been examining what has happened to equal opportunity in the private sector since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Our data show that progress has stalled, many firms are showing signs of increased gender and racial employment segregation, and few firms monitor equal employment opportunity progress. (Harvard Business Review)
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Aracelis Upia Montero bounds through the front door of her wood and cinderblock house, calling out for her children. The bubbly 41-year-old Montero – whom everyone calls Kuki – proudly shows guests around her cramped single-story home in Villa Altagracia in the Dominican Republic. Montero points out her new living room furniture. In the past couple years, she has added two bedrooms and now has indoor plumbing. She has also built a little apartment at the end of her dirt driveway that she rents out. (NPR)
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Rio de Janiero is proof that even nature’s most lavish blessings cannot guarantee success. Rio lost its position as Brazil’s political capital to Brasília in 1960 and its status as the country’s business capital to São Paulo over the following decades. Gang wars and poor infrastructure have battered its tourist industry. The 2016 Olympic games represent the city’s best chance of reversing decades of decline. But is it capable of seizing the chance? (The Economist)
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The National Black MBA Association provides financial support to students pursuing careers in business, academia and related professions. Scholarship awards range from $1,000 to $20,000 however award amounts are contingent upon funding for the current year. The application period through June 30.
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The Leaders of Tomorrow National Business Case Competition is a challenge like no other competition in the world. High school students analyze an MBA-level graduate school business case and present recommendations before panels of senior corporate executives and business school faculty. In the process, they must master advanced math, critical thinking, analytical, writing, research, and public speaking skills, and then present detailed financial projections and implementation plans.
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Did you graduate from an undergraduate business program only to find yourself waiting tables and living at home with your parents? PayScale, which collects and analyzes salary information from survey respondents, says you’re not alone. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Early Bird Discounts End June 28! Register Now for NBMBAA's 35th Annual Conference and Expo
Save big when you register now to join us September 10-14 for our 35th Annual Conference and Expo, "Courageous Leadership: Owning Your Own Success." Register today to take advantage of early bird pricing, get first crack at hotel rooms and set yourself up for an unforgettable networking, career building and professional development experience in Houston.
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Office for iPhone is big news, but not because the software is earthshaking. No, it’s a big deal primarily because of the politics of the situation – the optics, as public relations people say. Here is Microsoft – the once-mighty software global overlord, years into its repeated failures to produce a successful smartphone – creating an app that lets you edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on the gadget that defeated it, the iPhone. (The New York Times)
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Research suggests that taking a quick break from technology can set your week on track and get good ideas flowing freely. Embrace the downtime – it might be the only chance you get. (Fast Company)
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Roman Stanek and Robert J. Moore had the same dream. The two entrepreneurs saw businesses collecting lots of data about their customers’ Web transactions and decided there could be a huge market in helping those businesses analyze the data to determine who their customers were and how best to reach them. (The New York Times)
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There are 8.5 loyalty program memberships for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. But what do customers really want? (Fast Company)
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Can you alleviate poverty by just giving money to the poor? It seems like a tautology, sure. But for development experts, it is a subject of serious research. Say you give $100 to a poor person in a developing country with no strings attached, rather than providing goods or services like food or schooling, or $100 to use for a specific purpose. Does the money simply provide a one-time boost to her consumption? (The New York Times)
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A new study supports complaints by state prosecutors that some of the nation’s biggest banks have violated the terms of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement, a landmark agreement to clean up shoddy foreclosure practices. (The Washington Post)
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What do men's underwear, online file sharing, and flights up and down the California coast have in common? All three of those hot commodities are now being sold for a monthly flat rate, thanks to a growing number of companies that are embracing a subscription-based model of selling, well, just about anything. (Fortune)
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The American Dream isn't dead. It's just moved to Denmark. Now, we like to think of ourselves as a classless society, but it isn't true today. As the Brookings Institution has pointed out, America has turned into a place Horatio Alger would scarcely recognize: we have more inequality and less mobility than once-stratified Europe, particularly the Nordic countries. It's what outgoing Council of Economic Advisers chief Alan Krueger has dubbed the "Great Gatsby Curve" &ndsah; the more inequality there is, the less mobility there is. As Tim Noah put it, it's harder to climb our social ladder when the rungs are further apart. And it's getting worse. (The Atlantic)
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The loyalty of airline passengers will no longer be measured in miles, as industry watchers have long anticipated. In the future, earning the stature and privileges of a high-end frequent flier will be tallied in a more conventional currency: cold, hard cash. Two of the world’s largest airlines have already moved to impose yearly spending requirements for their traveling elites. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Big Data is big business. Sensors, GPS tracking, math modeling, and artificial intelligence offer companies real-time market insights at massive scale and open the door to unprecedented ways of monitoring, targeting, and measuring employees and customers. Analyst firm Gartner predicts that enterprises adopting Big Data technologies will "outperform competitors by 20 percent in every available financial metric." (Fortrune)
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Promoting people to their first management jobs is harder than it looks – for everyone involved. Here's how to increase the chances that it'll work out – up from the 60% average – and that you've got the right person for the job. (Fast Company)
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Paulett Eberhart is no shrinking violet. Brought in to turn the ship around at Philadelphia-based engineering and technology firm CDI, the executive told her team to be "brutally honest, but in a respectful way," even if they had to pound their fists on the table to get her attention. A big problem at many businesses, Eberhart recently told The New York Times, is that people don't spend enough time communicating, especially if they see something going wrong. (Fortune)
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Does your job excite you? For most American workers, the answer is a resounding "no." A new Gallup poll finds that 52% of all full-time workers in America aren't involved in, enthusiastic about or committed to their work. Another 18% are "actively disengaged," meaning they have gone beyond just checking out mentally, and could even be undermining colleagues' accomplishments. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Twenty-seven-year-old Trish Gallagher is very clear about the milestones that made her think, "Finally, I'm an adult." One was paying for her first solo vacation in 2010 to visit a college friend in San Francisco. Another was buying her first dog, a husky-hound puppy, at a shelter and raising him to age 4½, says the Fairbanks, Alaska, cartographer. The third: "Getting kicked off [her] parents' insurance into the shark-infested waters" of managing her own medical bills. (The Wall Street Journal)
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