Imagine if the United States government taxed the nation’s one-percenters so that their post-tax share of the nation’s income remained at 10 percent, roughly where it was in 1979. If the excess money were distributed equally among the rest of the population, in 2012 every family below that very top tier would have gotten a $7,105 check. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

Long hours spent working in a demanding environment can exhaust you, sure. But according to new research, there’s another hidden cost attached to an intense day: neglecting those secondary tasks that, while not as visible or lauded by your boss, might be essential to the safety or ethics of your organization. But there’s a little bit of good news, too: Taking regular, significant breaks can make a big difference. (HBR.org)
Learn More...

 

When it comes to consumer technology, many people are used to coveting the newest and shiniest gadget. So it may come as a surprise that a number of top executives and dealmakers are still clinging to ancient mobile phones. (Entrepreneur)
Learn More...

 

The oil and gas industry is still overwhelmingly male, with surveys showing that the executive boardrooms of petroleum companies are mostly a boys' club. In Nigeria, a number of well-financed businesswomen are aiming to change the picture there. The Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke is a powerful figurehead for them. (BBC News)
Learn More...

 

I can’t help but shake my head when people say, "You have to work hard if you want to be successful." Really? The most successful people I know are doing something that most others are not – and it’s not putting in the longest hours at the office. These top performers know what their natural talents are and use them as much as possible in their daily work. They work smarter, not harder. (Entrepreneur)
Learn More...

 

Getting college students to care about their future careers isn’t easy. But in a tight job market for new graduates, the people who run college career centers are resorting to attention-grabbing gimmicks – from popcorn to puppies – to get students in the door. The hope, directors say, is that getting students in early and often will get them thinking about internships sooner and equip them for what could be a long hunt for full-time jobs. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

Optimism is protective--we all know that confident people have a leg up in realizing their ambitions, and "fake it till you make it" can often be a successful strategy. Plus, looking on the bright side generally feels good. Scientists even tell us that realism is correlated with higher levels of depression. (Inc.)
Learn More...

 

People struggle with global teamwork, even though it’s essential to success in multinational firms. Despite their efforts to nimbly manage differences in time zones, cultures, and languages, cross-border collaborators often fail to reach shared understanding or common ground. They face conflicting group norms, practices, and expectations – all of which can cause severe fracturing along cultural lines. (HBR.org)
Learn More...

 

One morning in February, Japan’s government personnel department began an experiment in a nondescript building in a Tokyo residential area that could end up rewriting the rules of the nation’s powerful bureaucracy. For the first time, it invited 19 women from different ministries to an all-female training course designed to groom them for senior government positions. (Bloomberg)
Learn More...

 

A dark star, in theory, is a sun so dense that its gravitational field overpowers light itself, sucking in every ray that attempts to escape its surface. Much like Greater London, says Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland who’s leading the drive for independence in a Sept. 18 referendum, the outcome of which has become too close to call. (Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

On a cold day in April, a group of New Zealand fishermen set out to harvest 50,000 large oysters from the waters of the South Pacific. Once collected, the briny mollusks were transported to processing facilities, packaged four to a container, sealed in chilled polystyrene containers affixed with bright labeling and put on planes to China. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

Vassar has taken steps to hold down spending on faculty and staff. Amherst and the University of Florida have raised new money specifically to spend on financial aid for low-income students. American University reallocated scholarships from well-off students to needy ones. Grinnell set a floor on the share of every freshman class – 15 percent – whose parents didn’t go to college. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

If starting salaries were the sole measure of elite universities, U.S. News's most recent college rankings would look very different. Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, the country's top four universities by U.S. News's measure, for one, wouldn't crack the top 10, or 20, or even 30. And the University of Chicago, which tied for fourth place, wouldn't even make it into the top 200. (The Washington Post)
Learn More...

 

The 36th Annual Conference and Expo is next week in Atlanta, so there won't be a Netwire. If you're not registered yet, you can still register online right now and save money over the on-site rates! There's still time to join us for the year's can't-miss professional development, networking and career building event, including one of the country's largest diversity Career Expos, with nearly 300 companies hiring now.

Learn more about this year's dynamic event at our Conference website and by downloading the NBMBAA App.
We look forward to seeing you there!

 

This week's news from Apple was received enthusiastically by the crowd in Cupertino, Calif., and with a little more skepticism by Wall Street, which lightly dusted Apple’s stock price. My ears are still ringing from the U2 performance that capped the event, and from the steady stream of superlatives that came from Apple’s executives on stage. While the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch look cool, five questions keep coming to mind. (Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

It's been a big week in the world of gadgets. Apple announced its newest iPhones, the 6 and 6 Plus, and they're bigger than any other before. And on the smaller side, there's an Apple Watch – that does a lot of the same things. Meanwhile, Amazon took a nosedive with its foray into the smartphone marketplace. Here are some questions we had: Amazon slashed the price of the Fire phone from $199 To 99 cents. Why? (NPR)
Learn More...

 

In 2009, when Amy Norman and Stella Ma started pitching investors on their San Francisco-based startup, Little Passports, both had young children and Norman was pregnant. The overwhelming majority of the investors they met with were men who wanted to know "if we were running this as a ‘lifestyle company,’" Ma recalls. Investors passed and word got around Silicon Valley that "there’s no way women like this could grow a company fast enough" to satisfy venture capitalists, Norman says. (Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

Every year The Kiplinger Letter takes a wide-ranging look at business costs for the year ahead and how they’ll affect the bottom line. Next year, a hardier economy will bode well for businesses. We see economic growth rising 3% vs. 2.1% this year, led by consumer demand for cars, electronics and other goods plus a pickup in home sales. Corporate profits will be up a solid 7%, off a weak performance this year attributable to the bitter winter weather that ushered in 2014, hitting businesses hard enough to bring full-year profits down around 2%. (Kiplinger)
Learn More...

 

Traditional pensions are an endangered species. They're not extinct. For decades now, companies have been killing off their defined-benefit pensions. Instead of the promise of a monthly check from an employer in their old age – however long that lasts – workers get access to a voluntary 401(k) contribution plan. Those plans sometimes come with matching contributions from employers, but all the risks of saving enough for a long retirement fall entirely on workers. (Bloomberg)
Learn More...

 

Grain elevators, auto manufacturers and Amtrak passengers are still facing lengthy delays on rails, as freight train congestion continues to be a drag on the economy all across the country. Many blame the delays on the huge increase in Bakken crude oil shipped by rail from North Dakota to refineries in the south, Midwest and on both coasts. The railroads deny they're favoring oil shipments over other products. (NPR)
Learn More...

 

All told, Americans waste billions annually due to avoidable financial mistakes. We’ve all heard the saying, "there’s a sucker born every minute." Well, what if I were to tell you that this is a gross underestimate? According to the Department of Human Health and Services, there are about 7.6 Americans born every minute, and there’s good evidence that about five of them will grow up to be "suckers" when it comes to financial literacy. (Fortune)
Learn More...

 

Saving for a kid's college can feel like trying to scale a skyscraper. Unfortunately, the tool most recommended to parents for the challenge is often little better than a step stool – one known to wobble. The appeal of 529 college savings plans is that investment returns aren't taxed as long as the money's used for education. (Bloomberg)
Learn More...

 

In a quarter of a century, most business students will never enter a classroom. The faculty lectures, the MBA student discussions and the homework assignments will occur instead over the Internet, where each part of the educational experience can be played as many times as it takes to fully absorb or satisfy, as if it were a Seinfeld rerun. (CNBC)
Learn More...

 

Big Think and the Kellogg School of Management have launched a new executive training program, Ethics in Action. This unique, expert-driven, program is designed to help corporations address the ethical dilemmas their executives face today in a systematic, dynamic and engaging manner, with video modules and follow-up lessons on topics from dealing with cultural differences in the workplace to balancing profit maximization with social responsibility. (Big Think)
Learn More...

 

When Roberto Goizueta died of cancer in 1997, at the age of 65, he was a billionaire. Not bad for a Cuban émigré who had come to the United States as a teenager. He was by no means the first immigrant to America to become a billionaire, but the others had made their fortunes by founding and building companies or taking them public. Goizueta made his as the CEO of Coca-Cola. (HBR.org)
Learn More...

 

American Airlines is making its hub here more hectic – on purpose. Instead of spacing flights evenly throughout the day, American in August started bunching them together. The change restores an old format of "peak" scheduling, grouping flights into busy flying times followed by lulls when gates are nearly empty. After Miami International, American next year will "re-peak" schedules at its largest hubs in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

We've all heard the conventional wisdom for better managing our time and organizing our professional and personal lives. Don't try to multitask. Turn the email and Facebook alerts off to help stay focused. Make separate to-do lists for tasks that require a few minutes, a few hours and long-term planning. (The Washington Post)
Learn More...

 

In a past life, I used to be required to participate in quarterly sales meetings. These meetings followed a typical format: fly everyone in the company to an amazing destination, then lock them inside a hotel ballroom for 10 hours a day and force them to listen to speeches from sales leadership, as well as marketing, research, and legal departments (usually with a motivational speaker to close it all out). Try as they might, these meetings were boring. The real shame was that they were intended to rally troops and get the sales organization excited about new initiatives, as well as inspire them to think up new and better ways to increase sales in the field. The only saving grace: the late-night dinners. (HBR.org)
Learn More...

 

In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, America's book publishers took an audacious gamble. They decided to sell the armed forces cheap paperbacks, shipped to units scattered around the globe. Instead of printing only the books soldiers and sailors actually wanted to read, though, publishers decided to send them the best they had to offer. Over the next four years, publishers gave away 122,951,031 copies of their most valuable titles. (The Atlantic)
Learn More...