It's hard to name anyone who has achieved a great deal of success without first encountering some significant failures along the way. Here's how to start seeing failures as success-catalysts, not setbacks. (Fast Company)
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In those moments when my stress erupts, my rational mind doesn’t stand a chance. It’s like trying to use intellectual arguments to talk down a stampeding bull. Reason and stress speak different languages. Reason is intellectual; stress is physical. Reason favors words; stress prefers action. Our minds can advise us all they want, but our bodies have the upper hand. In fact, the more our minds try to curtail our stress, the more volatile it becomes. (Harvard Business Review)
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Sometimes it seems like the world is collapsing around us: young people have no work ethic, there's a leadership vacuum in corporate America, schools are in crisis. But all of this has happened before, and it will happen again. (CNN/Money)
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Reginald Browne tilts his 6-foot-5-inch frame forward to reach a chirping phone. "What do you want, what do you need?" he asks. It’s his standard greeting for just about anyone who calls, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its April 2014 issue. This time, it’s a representative of a large public pension fund who’s thinking about moving money into exchange-traded funds for the first time. Browne launches into his education mode, patiently answering questions on how closely an ETF will really track its index, how quickly the investor can get in and out and how much it will cost to trade. (Bloomberg)
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It's one of the most familiar and hated rituals of office life – the conference call. Abuses are rife. People on the line interrupt others, zone out or multitask, forgetting to hit "mute" while talking to kids or slurping drinks. Sales executive Erica Pearce has seen teleconferences interrupted by home FedEx deliveries, crying children and the sound of a co-worker vacuuming his house. (The Wall Street Journal)
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How do you know if you’re successful? Do you rely heavily on objective metrics such as your job title, the size of your bank account, or the colleges your children are getting into? Or do you focus more on the subjective, such as the satisfaction of solving thorny problems at work, the joy of collaborating with clever colleagues, or how happy you are at home? (Harvard Business Review)
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When John Burchett was laid off as a regional sales manager at Johnson Controls Inc. in October, the manufacturer offered him outplacement, a breed of career services that helps the newly unemployed start job searches and find new work. His package included access to online courses on topics like negotiation, as well as telephone consultations with a coach who urged him to do some networking and referred him to an online tutorial when he asked for guidance on using LinkedIn. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Having kids and earning an MBA are not mutually exclusive endeavors. Many schools offer resources for partners and kids of MBAs. Harvard Business School, Kellogg School of Management and Columbia Business School are a few top programs that tout their networks and clubs for families. But women MBAs, who need to juggle classes, networking events, and recruiting while either pregnant or caring for their kids, can have a harder time making it work than men with young kids. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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While many tech giants are fleeing the hardware business, China’s Lenovo is embracing it. In a two-week span in late January and early February, IBM, Google and Sony sold off portions of their hardware businesses due to a challenging cost structure, thinning profit margins and the desire to focus on more lucrative areas. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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Many of India’s business elite seem worried. Economic growth has slowed. Corruption remains untamed, a result of poorly paid civil servants who demand bribes in exchange for favors. The country’s infrastructure, long inferior to many other nations, still lags woefully behind. And nearly everyone agrees that an inept and bureaucratic government is holding back the country’s progress. (Poets & Quants)
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Russia isn’t known for its friendly investment climate or deep bench of influential business professors, which is why many of the country’s nascent corporate stars head to MBA programs in the U.S. and U.K. Moscow School of Management Skolkovo wants to change that. The school will launch a redesigned MBA program this October that may entice Russian students applying to Oxford, Cambridge, Insead, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others, to stay closer to home. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Detroit has a Black population of 83 percent and is a 45-minute drive from the University of Michigan. So how is it that the school only has 4.6 percent Black enrollment? The University of Michigan has had an ongoing struggle with its demographics for decades, but this semester, students are pushing back more than ever. (DiversityInc.)
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NBMBAA's new website is almost ready to go live. Go in today and update your profile to take advantage of new features, like a résumé review and score! And while you're updating, why not take the time to give your résumé a quick refresh. Whether you're actively job hunting, or just keeping your network active, a current, vibrant résumé  is key to ensuring your future success.

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This week, Apple rushed out a patch for its iOS 7 and iOS 6 operating systems to fix a serious security issue. Before I explain further, let me just say this: If you’ve gotten the prompt to update and you haven’t, do it now. If you’re still running older versions of iOS on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad, update now. The New York Times)
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If you are in the middle of a House of Cards binge, the news from Netflix over the weekend is good – video streaming quality will improve. After reports of declining performance in recent months, Netflix – which accounts for – cut a deal with Comcast to pay the cable provider for direct access to its systems. (NPR)
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The Wall Street Journal released a report of 30 startups from the U.S., China and Europe that are valued at $1 billion or more. These companies range from familiar firms like Pinterest and Uber which occupy the top 10 with valuations at $3.8 billion to film financiers like Legendary Entertainment who is responsible for the recent success of the The Dark Knight trilogy. However, the rest of the entrants on this list have incredible valuations but little recognition. We compiled a list of 11 startups that are worth billions but you've never heard of them. (Inc.)
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Talk to any independent business owner, and he or she will tell you that one of the best parts of the job is "being their own boss." But while the self-employed enjoy certain freedoms – from operations, marketing to working hours – unavailable to those who draw a salary, every successful employee should be the "boss" of their own future and career advancement. (Entrepreneur)
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There has been a lot of discussion about how the country’s economic recovery has been spread unevenly between high- and low-income households. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that there’s also a wide disparity among age groups. (The Washington Post)
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Houses and cars. They fatten the economy and thin our wallets. Without them, recoveries don't feel like recoveries. The real estate and auto industries account for $1 in every $2 spent by the typical U.S. family, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The Atlantic)
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As fewer and fewer American workers receive traditional pension benefits, many are looking to 401(k)s to support them after they leave the workforce. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 88 million Americans now have these accounts. But now some employers are changing the way those accounts are handled, and that could force workers to reassess how to prepare for retirement. (NPR)
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As the country wraps up Black History Month celebrations, a study shows that African-Americans in the U.S. are optimistic about their financial future, with 41 percent saying they are very good at managing money and 30 percent saying they are confident selecting investment options. Most still solidly believe in the American Dream. Only 28 percent indicated that they believe the American Dream is disappearing, versus 40 percent of the general population who held that more pessimistic view, according to the findings of MassMutual's third biennial 2013 State of the American Family Study, which offers a broad snapshot of Americans' financial views. (PR Newswire)
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A rash of consumer-friendliness has broken out across the mobile data industry. Over the last year, the four major carriers – AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile – have cut prices and offered greater flexibility in how they sell their voice, text and broadband services. The industry could be on the verge of an all-out price war. Who is responsible for this blessed state of affairs? Credit must go to the United States government. (The New York Times)
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Delta Air Lines Inc.'s changes to its loyalty program upend many of the rules of the frequent-flier game. The loyalty program's huge restructuring may be more rewarding for high-fare business travelers, but price-conscious vacationers won't like the changes that will take place next year. Cheap tickets will almost always earn fewer miles than they do today; expensive tickets will earn more. (The Wall Street Journal)
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In mid-September 2013, 10 professionals returning from multi-year career breaks walked into 270 Park Avenue in New York City to begin the J.P. Morgan ReEntry Program. Elsewhere on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse have recently initiated internship programs for return-to-work professionals. The Onramp Fellowship for returning lawyers, backed by four major law firms in 15 cities, opened for applications last month, and MetLife just announced a similar program to commence this spring. (Harvard Business Review)
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It was the day after Lehman failed, and the Federal Reserve was trying to decide what to do. It had been fighting a credit crunch for over a year, and now the worst-case scenario was playing out. A too-big-to-fail bank had just failed, and the rest of the financial system was ready to get knocked over like dominos. The Fed didn't have much room left to cut interest rates, but it still should have. The risk was just too great. (The Atlantic)
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When Hostess Brands Inc. went bankrupt in 2012, it triggered anxiety among employees at Ottenberg’s Bakery, a family-owned enterprise in Maryland. The companies shared a pension plan, and if Hostess couldn’t pay its retirees, Ottenberg’s would have to pick up the tab. (Bloomberg)
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When the going gets tough, what makes some bounce back while others fizzle out? Firing the naysayers in your head, surrounding yourself with a "board of advisors," get cozy with the unknown. (Fast Company)
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Keith Ferrazzi is founder and chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research-based consulting and training company, and he is The New York Times bestselling author of Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back? In this interview, Ferrazzi talks about the importance of making a people plan; how to learn to become more generous with those around you, and what to do when your generosity is met with skepticism. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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So, what is our problem? We fly through the air and complain about the food. We project our thoughts around the globe almost instantaneously and then complain about a one-second lag. We live in age of miracles. We live with machines that can look painlessly inside us if we get sick and medicines that can heal us from things that were deadly a century ago. We should be amazed ALL THE TIME! We should be freaking out in wonder, marveling at the view from 30,000 feet and the wirelessly connected supercomputers we're carrying in our pockets. But we're not. (NPR)
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