What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at your desk? For many of us, checking email or listening to voice mail is practically automatic. In many ways, these are among the worst ways to start a day. Both activities hijack our focus and put us in a reactive mode, where other people’s priorities take center stage. They are the equivalent of entering a kitchen and looking for a spill to clean or a pot to scrub. (Harvard Business Review)
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In the winter of 1998 at the University of Rochester, I had an 40-minute interview with consulting and marketing company Sapient, and encountered managing director Tim Smith, a seemingly amiable interviewer. I was less than seven months from graduating with an MBA. At the time, Sapient was working on harnessing the emerging power of the Internet to transform businesses. I was well prepared for the discussion – perhaps too much so – because I desperately wanted to get the job. After a flurry of opening questions I thought I had answered well, Smith pulled back from the conversation and said something that changed my life and my very way of thinking. (Fast Company)
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Resilience may be more important than luck to your success. One thing these multimillionaires have in common is the ability to bounce back. (Inc.)
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While the debate continues about whether leaders are born or made, the truth is that great leaders evolve one pivotal decision at a time. We all confront pivot points in our work lives, but great leaders turn these pivotal decisions into catalysts for growth rather than career stoppers. (Fast Company)
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What's better than a raise in July? Another in October. And one more in January. As companies try to retain top employees and hit growth targets, some are ditching the annual salary review and doling out raises and bonuses several times a year. The practice can be risky, compensation experts and executives say, since workers who respond well at first could grow unhappy if the rewards slow down. (The Wall Street Journal)
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You can build stronger business relationships by making better connections with customers, employees, and others. Your bottom line will thank you. (Inc.)
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Americans stay chained to their desks and smartphones for long hours, and many view a 40-hour workweek as "slacking." But are we really getting more quality work done? Not necessarily, according to research from PGi. (Fast Company)
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President Obama imposed a new round of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, targeting some of the crown jewels of the country’s financial, energy and defense industries in what officials described as the most punishing measures taken to date by the United States in retaliation for Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. (The New York Times)
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Ou Chengbi, a butcher at a sweltering open-air market on the outskirts of Guangzhou in southeastern China, can scarcely see signs of recovery in her country’s economy. Dripping with perspiration near unrefrigerated slabs of beef in her stall, she described how as recently as last winter she could still chop up an entire cow each day and sell it all. (The New York Times)
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Companies want to hire technically skilled MBAs, and business schools are finally starting to get it. MBA programs equip students with management techniques, accounting skills, and increasingly, entrepreneurship chops. Some top programs, however, believe MBA should learn to code. (Businessweek)
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Four area high school students represented the National Black MBA Association ® (NBMBAA) St. Louis Chapter in the NBMBAA Leaders of Tomorrow ® (LOT) 13th Annual National Business Case Competition on the campus of The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business on June 21, 2014. The NBMBAA-St. Louis Chapter team won first place. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
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If you can’t write code, should you get free lunch? The war for tech talent is reshaping employer policies from coast to coast, with free snacks, booze and dry-cleaning becoming standard at many offices. Companies usually offer these perks to sales associates, marketing managers and developers alike; bosses reason that they have to, or risk causing tension among the employee ranks. But do they really want to? (The Wall Street Journal)
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Starbucks customers who love their grande frappuccinos but can’t stand waiting in line may soon be in luck: Starbucks will soon begin testing a new service that will allow customers to place an order from a mobile device and pick it up in the store. (Fortune)
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Jake Fitzsimmons opened his first Stuft Burger Bar in Fort Collins, Colo., in 2010, after the worst recession in decades. It turned out to be an excellent time to open a burger joint – Coloradans were downsizing their dinners out — but a terrible time to apply for a loan. "Why even bother?" Mr. Fitzsimmons remembers thinking. (The New York Times)
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If you’re an entrepreneur you have heard the million reasons not to go into business: It’s too risky, you might go into debt, you’ll probably lose sleep, your social life is kaput, and the list goes on. But even with all these uncertainties, people are still attracted to the startup world. There are just as many, if not more reasons to take the leap and go into business for yourself. (Entrepreneur)
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By important measures, it's awfully expensive to be poor. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her book Nickel and Dimed, many entry-level jobs pay next to nothing with unpredictable schedules. This makes savings, second jobs, affordable loans, and child care all but impossible to arrange. (The Atlantic)
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Here’s a quick question for you. What do the following years have in common: 1853, 1906, 1929, 1969, 1999. Pass the question around your office. Call your money manager and ask him or her, too. Post it on your office notice board. Give up? Those were the peaks of the five massive, generational stock-market bubbles in U.S. history. (MarketWatch)
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The U.S. Black Chambers (USBC) and the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators, and Developers (NABHOOD) are formally partnering to make sure that a significant portion of the $40 billion African Americans spend each year on travel and tourism remains in Black hands. (Black Press USA)
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Many people who are deeply in debt are desperate for a quick fix. They ask the question: What can I do to get out of debt? But they aren’t willing to accept the answer I give them, which is that it takes time. And discipline. And sacrifice. It takes cutting your expenses or working more, or both. (The Washington Post)
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Sharon Carson admits she just did something strange. At 49, she wrote a check to an insurance company for a product that won’t give her any financial benefit until she's in her 80s. Carson, a top executive in JPMorgan Chase’s retirement business, knows that buying a longevity annuity can pay off. (Bloomberg)
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Here's an experience many of us have had: You're shopping on your smartphone. You click on the shoes or books you want. But then, when you get to the shopping cart, you abandon ship. Visa says that's a big problem for retailers. On Wednesday, the credit card company announced it's rolling out a designed to get us to spend more money online. (NPR)
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A new theory to explain why Rupert Murdoch has been so quiet on Twitter of late: He’s been pursuing the deal of a lifetime – again. Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox made an $80 billion offer in recent weeks to take over Time Warner, according to a report in the The New York Times. Time Warner rejected the offer. (Businessweek)
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The CEOs of U.S. companies are compensated exceedingly well. A recent analysis by the AFL-CIO found that the heads of S&P 500 companies are paid 331 times as much, on average, as production and nonsupervisory employees. Regardless of whether this is fair – some believe that CEOs aren’t paid nearly enough – it’s worth understanding how we got here. (Harvard Business Review)
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America's modern era of state-run lotteries started 50 years ago in New Hampshire. Today, across 43 states, the District of Columbia and several territories, people wager more than $56 billion a year on lotteries. The take for state governments is about a third of that, and in many states lottery revenues exceed corporate income taxes. (NPR)
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There is a striking generational split in the Democratic electorate. This deepening division is apparent in a June Pew Research Center survey of more than 10,000 people, "Beyond Red vs. Blue." The Pew survey points up the emergence of a cohort of younger voters who are loyal to the Democratic Party, but much less focused on economic redistribution than on issues of personal and sexual autonomy. (The New York Times)
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We often find ourselves engaged with members of large organizations on questions of how to be more innovative and entrepreneurial. In virtually every case we hear something like this: "I have an idea for a new product (or process, system, program, etc.). I’m not dead certain it can be pulled off, but if it could, it can have a significant impact on the business. It’s not within the day-to-day scope of my job and I certainly don’t want to put myself or the company at significant risk, but it would be a shame if I didn’t try to move the idea forward somehow. How do I do this within a pretty traditional organization?" (Harvard Business Review)
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In "Looks Good On Paper," clinical psychologist Leslie Pratch explores dealing effectively with setbacks and being a successful leader. We all know that a person who has been handed leadership responsibilities in the past and a person who is a true leader are two completely different job candidates. That’s where Leslie Pratch comes in. (Fortune)
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Vacations are for unplugging: we all need to escape the daily grind from time to time, after all. But that doesn’t have to mean unplugging from the entire internet. In fact, you may have a more enjoyable and meaningful vacation by staying connected – as long as you’re staying connected to fun, friends, and family, rather than to work. (Harvard Business Review)
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Americans tend to have a lot of stuff – closets full of shoes, garages cluttered with gear, basements stacked with boxes of who knows what. But for about as long as Americans have been stocking up on the latest gadgets and styles, there's also been a vocal band of dissenters, arguing for the merits of a simpler, less materialist life. (The Atlantic)
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