Several years ago we came up with a great idea for a new leadership-development offering we thought would be valuable to everyone. We had research demonstrating that when people embarked on a self-development program, their success increased dramatically when they received follow-up encouragement. We developed a software application to offer that sort of encouragement. People could enter their development goals, and the software would send them reminders every week or month asking how they were doing, to motivate them to keep on going. We invested a lot of time and money in this product. (Harvard Business Review)
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Highly successful people are the ones who have failed the most. As the public, we usually only learn about these individuals and their companies once they have made it big. We admire their success yet rarely witness the immense struggle they went through to get there. By not being exposed to their failures, we are unfortunately only left to compare ourselves to their achievements. (Fast Company)
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It's time to stop debating the value of a college education, say a pair of professors from New York University and the University of Virginia. Instead, they say in a new book, parents and employers should ask whether schools are doing much to help students become productive adults. (The Wall Street Journal)
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If it’s true that many people fear public speaking more than death, it’s equally true that businesspeople are condemned to a thousand small deaths in client pitches, in boardrooms, and on stage. And that death can turn slow and torturous when you are asked to speak unexpectedly with little or no time to prepare. (Harvard Business Review)
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You have something to say. You've been saving it up for a while now, being patient, listening, taking notes, and researching. You want your voice to be heard, but you're scared to open your mouth. Reading about self-promotion and marketing is interesting, but it totally doesn't jive with what you think will work for you or how you think you should share your work. (Inc.)
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Balancing work and personal life is a known crapshoot. Even if you're ahead of schedule on one project, you've gotten behind on others, and the hamster wheel spins faster. All the while, we're wearing how busy we are like a badge of honor, while wondering where the time goes. (Fast Company)
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On his way to signing a blockbuster deal with Nike, Kevin Durant faced some of the same decisions as anyone weighing compensation offers. Here's what you can learn from his choice. (Money Magazine)
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Americans have been under the impression for years that equal employment legislation and similar programs in companies have helped to conquer discrimination in the workplace. We’ve been pretty much secure in the impression that women and minorities have almost as fair a chance at advancement as men, and that the glass ceiling can be overcome. (Triple Pundit)
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Kellogg Co., the Battle Creek cereal maker, has released its fifth annual diversity report, putting the spotlight on company-wide efforts to bring everyone to the table. Kellogg recently released its latest edition of Features, its diversity and inclusion report highlighting the company’s efforts to create a workforce as diverse as the consumers it serves to strengthen understanding of needs in the marketplace. (Grand Rapids Business Journal)
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The European Central Bank has cut its benchmark interest rate to 0.05%, and introduced new stimulus measures. The ECB had earlier cut its rate from 0.25% to 0.15% in June, and also became the first major central bank to introduce negative interest rates. It will also launch an asset purchase programme, which will buy debt products from banks. (BBC News)
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Earlier this summer, Mario Draghi pulled out his big guns, threatening to deploy vast financial firepower to try to jolt the European economy out of its cycle of stagnant growth and falling inflation. Thursday, he fired them. (The New York Times)
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Prospective business students are trying to steer clear of student loans. Instead, they're sidling up to more familiar investors: their parents. Forty-four percent of people considering graduate business degrees last year expected to tap mom and dad for financial assistance, up from 38% in 2009, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Black students rely more on student loans to pay for college than do other racial groups and they’re less likely to pay off the debt, according to a study released today. The research was presented at a conference on higher education and minorities in Washington, D.C., hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles, Civil Rights Project. (Businessweek)
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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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How many megahacks have we consumers faced in recent memory? Well, there was that Target one that affected something like 110 million of us. Earlier this year, Open SSL, the protocol that protects much of the Internet, was hit by the Heartbleed bug and exposed most of us. Then there was news that hackers got 1 billion email and other sign-in credentials this summer. (NPR)
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Today is not Twitter's day. Hours after the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Twitter is planning to debut a Facebook-style, algorithmically curated newsfeed – provoking a backlash among Twitter users – the image-sharing site Twitpic announced that it was shutting down amid legal pressure from Twitter over Twitpic's trademark application. (The Washington Post)
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Many business owners have a dream of selling their business some day. But many of those businesses will never be sold. You can see this simply by reviewing the number of businesses listed for sale each month on the website BizBuySell.com.(The New York Times)
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From fostering character to keeping things simple, it’s often words of wisdom that teachers offer during casual conversations or informational sidebars that have the biggest impact on students. With back-to-school season upon us, a dozen entrepreneurs shared the best advice they ever received from a teacher. (Fast Company)
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America's Baby Boomers are facing a serious housing crunch, with many expected to struggle to afford their homes come retirement. By 2030, the number of adults age 65 and older will more than double to 73 million, according to a report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the AARP Foundation. (CNN Money)
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Nutritional disparities between America’s rich and poor are growing, despite efforts to provide higher-quality food to people who most need it. So says a large study just released from the Harvard School of Public Health that examined eating habits of 29,124 Americans over the past decade. (The Atlantic)
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In this recent article, I described how parents or grandparents could make a child rich (eventually) by investing only $1 a day. I suggested investing in the asset class of small-cap value stocks. Is 12% reasonable? (MarketWatch)
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Read the headlines about retirement readiness and you'd think that at least half of us had forgotten to go to class, do our homework or study for one of the biggest tests of our lives. When exam day arrives, we're totally unprepared. But what if it's just a bad dream and we wake up to find that we are on track after all? (Kiplinger's)
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At the Dell household, Labor Day marks the undeniable end of summer. It's back to school for the kids and back to the crazy pace that fall brings. (Secretly, I like it that way. I always have.) But the lull of summer is special, too, and a great time to catch up on all those things we have trouble getting to the rest of the year, like that pile of books on the nightstand. I'm happy to say I got to spend part of my summer with some great books written by some very smart people. (Inc.)
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Many retailers and clothing companies have already started their autumn advertising efforts. Now comes the rest of Madison Avenue, taking advantage of the start of a new football season to bring out major campaigns intended to put consumers in the mood for fall shopping – and to begin thinking about, yes, Christmas. (The New York Times)
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Jon Haidt thinks corporate culture in America works relatively well. But that hasn’t stopped him from launching a crusade to up-end the way Wall Street titans do business. Haidt, a professor of business ethics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, founded a nonprofit called Ethical Systems this year. (Businessweek)
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Be careful when you grab that office bagel. The Internal Revenue Service may be watching. The U.S. tax agency is taking a closer look at a popular tax-exempt perk offered by companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG): free meals. "There’s really potentially a lot of tax revenue involved," said Lawrence Zelenak, a tax law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "It sounds like you’re being inherently trivial, but I think this is not." (Bloomberg)
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When thousands of oil field workers descended on Watford City, North Dakota, they completely redefined its character and economy (The Atlantic)
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We hear more and more that organizations must have a compelling "purpose" – but what does that mean? Aren’t there already a host of labels out there that describe organizational direction? Do we need yet another? I think we do, and I’ve pulled together a typology of sorts to help distinguish all these terms from one another. (Harvard Business Review)
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CEOs and managers ought to choose which details matter most to them and cede control to just about everything else to leaders they trust. (Fortune)
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The 2014 NFL season starts Thursday, September 4. Here are 5 essential tips for tuning in to all the NFL action your eyeballs can handle throughout the regular season, and beyond. (Money Magazine)
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