Last week, my colleague, Matthew Philips, raised an interesting question about the skill gap, pointing to new research that claims the problem is not that workers are unqualified, but that companies’ expectations have changed: They are no longer investing resources in training their staff. (Businessweek)
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Productive people sometimes confuse the difference between reasonable delay and true procrastination. The former can be useful ("I’ll respond to this email when I have more time to write it"). The latter is, by definition, self-defeating ("I should respond to this email right now, and I have time, and my fingers are on the keys, and the Internet connection is perfectly strong, and nobody is asking me to do anything else, but I just ... don’t ... feel like it."). (The Atlantic)
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Last football season, Evan Berlin was a champion. He beat his friends in a fantasy league and won $625 on a $100 buy-in. This season, Berlin, a technology executive in Denver, hopes to profit from another sort of sports play: owning shares of stock in Vernon Davis, the 30-year-old tight end for the San Francisco 49ers. (The New York Times)
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When Noah Hanft was general counsel and chief franchise officer of MasterCard Inc., he observed management colleagues deftly arrange deals for the big credit-card company. Yet when it came to their own careers, some executives' negotiation skills seemed to vanish. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Do you frequently tell yourself that you’ll do better "next time" and then don’t change when the time comes? Do you often decide to do something "later" only to find that it never gets done? If you answered "yes" to either one of these questions, you’re probably ignoring the fact that your behavior today is a strong indicator of your behavior tomorrow. You’re not alone. In The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal shares how, in a research study, participants were much less likely to exert willpower in making healthy choices when they thought they would have another opportunity the following week. (Harvard Business Review)
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Every human being has something unique and important to offer while they are alive. It is up to each one of us to figure out what that is and to have the courage to pursue it. If we don’t, it’s lost forever. In our culture, we spend a lot of time getting education and training on skills to help us earn a living. However, we don’t get much help when it comes to building a life. We lack training on important life skills and are often left wondering, "What in the heck is my special gift and how do I find that out?" (Fast Company)
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People want to do business with other people, not with companies. Putting a strong personal brand on the frontline of your sales process can dramatically improve conversion rates. (Inc.)
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You’ve probably heard the following statistic: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them. The finding comes from a Hewlett Packard internal report, and has been quoted in Lean In, The Confidence Code and dozens of articles. It’s usually invoked as evidence that women need more confidence. (Harvard Business Review)
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It’s a scenario that could be straight out of a textbook on gender bias: "Jessica is really talented, but I wish she’d be less abrasive. She comes on too strong." Her male counterpart? "Steve is an easy case, smart and great to work with. He needs to learn to be a little more patient, but who doesn’t?" (Fast Company)
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Argentina is bracing for a day of road blocks and disruption as labor unions stage a second national strike in less than five months while July’s bond default threatens to fuel inflation and undermine growth. Bloomberg)
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It’s been entertaining to listen as American politicians fulminate about Burger King’s (BKW) pending $11 billion acquisition of Tim Hortons (THI), the Canadian coffee chain. To hear them tell it, Burger King is spending all that money so it can spirit its Miami headquarters across the country’s northern border and escape its American tax burden. (Businessweek)
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With one of the world’s fastest rates of economic growth, Africa will likely produce a big chunk of the next generation’s executives. Peter Tufano, dean of University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, wants them to carry the Saïd pedigree. To make that happen, he aims to boost the proportion of African students in his school’s MBA program to 10 percent within the next few years. (Businessweek)
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What to conclude when an elite business school dean says getting a certificate in accounting – not an MBA – was about the best thing he did in his early twenties? In defense of the dean in question, Sir Andrew Likierman of London Business School, his school was yet to be founded when he was in college. Yet it’s illustrative of his mentality, and the one he likes to see in his faculty and students: one that embraces an eclectic world view, where there is more than one truth. (Poets & Quants)
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A recent study indicated that certified employees tend to earn 10-25% more in annual salary than their non-certified peers... and 1.2 million new project management jobs will be created, on a yearly basis, for the next 10 years... If you need to pass the PMP® (Project Management Professional) or CAPM®(Certified Associate in Project Management) certification exam and you 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 of classroom instruction.

CertifiNOW is being offered September 14-16 on-site at the NBMBAA 36th Annual Conference and Expo. NBMBAA members receive even deeper discounts on this amazing course, so register today!
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One persistent criticism of the tech industry is that it no longer works on big ideas. For all of Silicon Valley’s talk of changing the world, critics say, Google and Facebook mainly hire armies of coders to figure out how to serve you more relevant ads, while Apple and Amazon just want to keep selling you new stuff. (The New York Times)
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For some teenagers, wearing last season’s jeans will always be unthinkable. But a growing number consider texting on a dated smartphone even worse. For teenage apparel retailers, that screen-obsessed teenager poses a big threat in the still-important back-to-school sales season.(The New York Times)
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As the cofounder of a startup, I’m grateful to have a mentor, a successful entrepreneur and startup employee himself, who has helped me through the highs and lows of startup life. From how to play office politics to how to kick butt at high level meetings to how to best manage my time, he has offered me nuanced advice, over and over again. (Fast Company)
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It's easy for entrepreneurs to get distracted by disruptive technologies. E-commerce, social networks, 3-D printing, cloud computing, robotics, the Internet of Things, and other breakthrough areas give young companies a chance to compete more evenly with large ones. Innovation clearly becomes key to running a business. But in the rush to the new, it's easy for people to forget what exists that is still of enormous value. (Inc.)
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You may have noticed when grilling steaks or hot dogs this summer that they cost more than they did last year. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, pork and beef prices more than 11 percent since last summer. Supply and demand determine price, and the pork supply comes from places like Riley Lewis' hog farm near Forest City, Iowa. (NPR)
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Gen Xers aren’t making much more than their elders, and they have taken out way more debt and are reducing it at a slower pace than any other generation. (Fortune)
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American adults under age 30 hate cash so much that 51 percent of them will use plastic, even for purchases amounting to less than $5. That’s according to a survey released on Wednesday by CreditCards.com. The older you are, the likelier you are to whip out cash, rather than a debit card or credit card, the study found. Seventy-seven percent of Americans 50 or older prefer cash for purchases of under $5. (Businessweek)
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Money of course isn't everything. Not by a long shot. Where your definition of success is concerned, money may rank far down the list. Everyone’s definition of "success" is different. Here's mine: "Success is making those that believed in you look brilliant." (Entrepreneur)
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If you're the parent of a high-school sophomore or junior this fall, odds are that the great specter of college – and how you will pay for it – looms large. So start thinking like a college financial-aid officer. Understanding how a given college evaluates a family's finances could help guide your financial decision-making – about such things as how much to contribute to retirement accounts, whether to take out an auto loan or whether to pay off the mortgage – in the years leading up to Junior's departure. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Like many students who are starting school, MBAs will see their leisure time shrink in the next few weeks. New students will be immersed in orientation, and returning second-years may have just a few days to transition from being summer interns to being students.​ But it's not just what's happening on campus that occupies​ student​s'​ time. Many are preparing to travel around the U.S. for MBA conferences and career expos that are coming up soon. (U.S. News and World Report)
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Payrolls are rising, but there are strings attached. A new survey from human-resources services firm Aon Hewitt found that companies are spending a record share of their payroll on performance-based bonuses, signaling a shift away from longer-term salary increases. (The Wall Street Journal)
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It’s time for Wall Street to accord Brian Moynihan the Jamie Dimon-sized respect. He’s just taken his biggest step yet towards the goal so seemingly implausible that most of the investment community dismissed it long ago: making BofA one of the world’s most profitable companies. (Fortune)
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Imagine that you’re running retail banking for a large, diversified financial services firm. You are focused on and rewarded for building the retail business. You’re a tremendous success. The CEO makes you part of the senior executive team. You’re still heading up retail, of course, and you have a few team members who are vital to making your numbers. (Harvard Business Review)
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Whether your leadership role puts you in charge of your own company, a division, a workgroup, or just the occasional project, checking in daily on a few key points is a proven path to success. (Inc.)
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We thought there wasn't much any of us could have done. In retrospect, there was one area where I might have been able to help, though at the time I didn't think about it in those terms. His financial health deteriorated more than his physical health, and that was one of the primary sources of stress. It Wasn't His Heart Alone That Killed Him – It Was His Debt. (Daily Finance)
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