It’s ironic but true: some days the biggest impediment to getting things done is how much you need to do. You know the feeling. Your to-do list is as long as your arm, the phone is buzzing, the sink is leaking at home and there’s a huge event coming up. You can feel your chest tighten and your mind spin, thinking again and again about how much you need to accomplish. You’re not at your most productive exactly when you need to be. (Inc.)
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Money isn’t everything for aspiring MBAs. At least that’s the upshot of a recent survey conducted by Net Impact, a nonprofit group that encourages young people to pursue careers in sustainability. Eighty-five percent of the more than 3,300 students who responded to the survey said they would take a 15 percent pay cut to work for an organization with values that match their own.(Bloomberg/Businesswek)
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While everyone’s life looks different, I believe that with a little work, most people can spend more time on the things that matter to them, and less on the things that don’t. Here’s an eight-step process for making that happen: (Fast Company)
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Eight years after Hurricane Katrina, the Ferris wheel at the former Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans sits idle. "Closed for Storm" signs are still posted and the abandoned, weed-choked site remains a thorn in the side of officials leading one of the most extensive city-rebuilding projects in U.S. history. (AP)
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As the story goes, Walt Disney had a key piece of advice to the executives planning the Magic Kingdom: Build the castle first. Disney understood that everyone involved in achieving his vision – from the Madison Avenue advertisers selling it to the guys hacking their way through the mosquito-infested Florida swamp – needed literally to see the beauty of this vision to remind them what they were working toward. So the first thing to rear up out of the swamp was, in fact, Cinderella's Castle, which, with its fluttering flats and whimsical turrets, was the very embodiment of the magic he intended to make.(Harvard Business Review)
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Workers have new tasks on their to-do list: Say hello to colleagues. Don't forget to smile. Companies may be reluctant to admit their offices are anything less than pleasant, but incivility – think belittling barbs or gruff responses – can lead to lost productivity, creativity and talent. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Po Bronson, who studied the science of competition, and co-authored Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, answers the question of how to make your job more secure. (Money)
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"As a brown woman, your chances of being seen and heard in the world are next to nothing," he said. "For your ideas to be seen, they need to be edgier." He paused, as if to ruminate on this, before continuing. "But if you are edgy, you will be too scary to be heard." This was the advice I got from a marketing guru when I asked for his help with titling my second book. (Harvard Business Review)
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Portugal is finding that increasing exports is the way to pull its economy out of a recession. For 127 years, Herdade de Manantiz has been producing olive oil, mostly for the domestic market. But having suffered through recession like thousands of other traditional businesses, it has started overhauling its operations and searching for customers outside Portugal. (The New York Times)
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After they sold H.J. Heinz to Warren Buffett and a bunch of Brazilians in June, the ketchup manufacturer’s outgoing board of directors met for dinner at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Club to congratulate themselves on a job well done. Twenty-three billion dollars had just changed hands. The takeover price, at $72.50 a share, was almost 20 percent higher than the company’s recent all-time high. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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A new report indicates that over the next seven years the need for highly skilled business intelligence workers in the U.S. alone will dramatically exceed the available workforce – by as much as 60%. Here's how to fix that. (Fast Company)
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Columbia Business School on Wednesday announced a revamped MBA core curriculum for the incoming class, shifting some course content online to free up classroom time for discussion. Other changes include moving a credit-bearing leadership course from the first semester to orientation, increasing the number of electives that first-year students can take from 12 to 13.5, overhauling Decision Models course to emphasize the use of big data, and infusing more courses with "entrepreneurial thinking." (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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It's getting close, but there's still time to register and join us in Houston for the 35th Annual Conference and Exposition. Get all the information you need by using the Conference website to secure your housing, see options for booking your travel and to register for discounted on-site coaching. View our full Pre-Conference Planning Guide for help planning your journey to Conference.
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There really are twice as many instances of the Tor software running than before. The question is, why? If you’re unfamiliar with Tor, the service is actually a package of products that users can download and, once enabled, lets them surf the Internet privately. (The Washington Post)
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Facebook wants you to share as much information about yourself as possible. It wants your friends to do the same. After all, the more personal details you feed into the network, the less likely you are to pack your data suitcase and leave. Advertisers tend to like all that data too. All this means your default privacy settings probably don’t jibe with how you want to actually share your information. (Wired)
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Many people are their own worst enemy. While they may start a project with energy and enthusiasm, they eventually fail because they have an inner dialog that doesn't support their desire to succeed. (Inc.)
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In 2001 a huge earthquake shook the state of Gujarat in India. 2,000 people were killed, 400,000 lost their homes, and countless more lost their businesses in the devastation. One young entrepreneur, Mansukhbhai Prajapati, lost everything, but found an innovative way to get back on his feet. (CNN International)
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Across the country, a growing number of single-family rentals provide an option for many who lost their homes in the housing crash through foreclosure and for those who cannot obtain a mortgage under today’s tougher credit conditions. But the decline in homeownership is also changing many neighborhoods in profound ways, including reduced home values, lower voter turnout and political influence, less social stability and higher crime. (The New York Times)
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It's been over four years since the recovery officially began, but there are still over four million people who are long-term unemployed. That's four million people who can't find work even after looking for six months or more – four million people who can't even get companies to look at their resumes anymore. (The Atlantic)
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Health insurance costs for small business owners have been rising for more than a decade, and some are concerned the health care law will drive their premiums higher at an even faster clip. Many appear to be coping by passing some of the costs along to their employees. (The Washington Post)
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The customers of Boston-based startup PerkStreet Financial were left empty-handed last week when the company announced it is shutting down operations effective Sept. 26 – and discontinuing its perks program immediately. "Consistent with the terms of our Rewards Program Agreement, we discontinued our perks program and cancelled all perks balances as of Aug. 12, 2013," reads the PerkStreet announcement about the end of its lush 2% cash-back reward on signed debit-card transactions. (MarketWatch)
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If you need to pass the PMP® or CAPM® exam and want to get the best project management learning experience in just 3 days, then CertifiNOW is the right choice for you. This project management learning program provides the best learning experience in a condensed amount of time, while also satisfying most, if not all, of your professional certification, education, and training needs. The CertifiNOW certification course reduces exam preparation time from an average of nine to twelve months, down to 3 days.
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Patty Baxter realized there was a problem. In her 20 years at Metro Guide Publishing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the office usually hummed with sales calls. Now, it was quiet. Advertising sales were down and Ms. Baxter identified a reason: Her sales staff, all under age 35, were emailing clients with their pitches, not calling them on the phone. (The Wall Street Journal)
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No doubt about it, moving to a new city or state to look for a job is risky, to the point where John Challenger, CEO of outplacement giant Challenger, Gray & Christmas, calls it "an option of last resort for most job seekers." Even so, his firm's research shows a marked uptick in the number of unemployed managers who are taking the plunge. (CNN/Money)
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President Obama's powerful address yesterday, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, included a beautiful turn of phrase linking social and economic progress for blacks in America. "For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can't afford the meal?" Without equality of economic opportunity, legal equality can only accomplish so much. (The Atlantic)
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Determined to retain your most talented executives? Well, here's some counterintuitive advice: The best way to keep them from leaving is to prepare them to do just that. (The Wall Street Journal)
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You're a boss. You have a bunch of employees you consider under-motivated, unproductive, and, well, sorta lazy. You wonder: How do I make them talk less? Focus more? Try harder? Think more creatively? Just be better? You turn to social science and economic research and find that much of the conclusions appear to be divided into two strategic approaches. For lack of more officious-sounding terms, I'm going to call them: the Feel-Good strategies vs. the Feel-Bad strategies. (The Atlantic)
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