We’re all too busy, spending our days in back-to-back meetings and our nights feverishly responding to emails. (Adam Grant, a famously responsive Wharton professor, told me that on an "average day" he’ll spend 3-4 hours answering messages.) That’s why people who waste our time have become the scourge of modern business life, hampering our productivity and annoying us in the process. (Harvard Business Review)
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Google Maps is so comprehensive that you can use it to plan a New York City subway trip down to the minute. But in the parts of West Africa affected by the Ebola epidemic, Google barely has the roads mapped out. More often than not, the names of villages are missing – and sometimes the village altogether. (Fast Company)
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Critical thinking is a critical skill for young workers these days. What that means, though – and how to measure it – is less clear. Employers complain that colleges are not producing graduates who can solve problems and connect the dots on complex issues, but bosses stumble when pressed to describe exactly what skills make critical thinkers. That leaves job seekers wondering what employers really want and, once on the job, unsure of whether they’re supposed to follow the rules or break them. (The Wall Street Journal)
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There isn’t a wrong or right time to start your MBA. Instead, there is a less or more appropriate moment in your professional and personal life. But ever since the financial crisis hit and the turbulence of the uncertain economic environment took over, a different question emerged: do you start an MBA in times of economic stagnation, or do you wait for the storm to pass? (Business Because)
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Someone sends you an email message or a text, and you’re unsure how to respond. It’s about a complex negotiation, or a politically sensitive situation. Or maybe it’s just from a person who unnerves you. For a moment, you pause. But for most of us, most of the time, that pause doesn’t last long. Instead we react, feeling the need to immediately craft a response. (Harvard Business Review)
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Anxiety is baked into our survival instinct. It's when that worry over the future gets out of hand or impedes our performance that we have a problem. Use your anxiety the right way and it will help you be more productive and proactive. Here are some steps to get you on that productivity path. (Fast Company)
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Yesterday I had a very full day. I had blocked it all out with important things to do like write a new column, and do some client work as well as finish reading three chapters and a case study for my marketing course later that day. I timed out every task so I could get it all done. Then it happened, two calls came in needing immediate attention. (Inc.)
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American Express Co. (AXP) Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Chenault advised National Basketball Association owners during their annual meeting, exalting workplace diversity as necessary to beating the competition. "He’s an All-Star when it comes to CEOs," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told Bloomberg News after three days of meetings concluded in New York. "Creating a diverse workforce is ultimately about competing like crazy." (Bloomberg)
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Corporate diversity programs often have a singular focus: to boost the number of diverse employees to make the company's workforce more representative of the general population. Seems logical, but does diversity in numbers automatically equate to an inclusive culture? Not necessarily. (Huffington Post)
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A feverish patient suspected to have Ebola left a hospital in Liberia on July 17, disregarding the advice of doctors there. Three days later, he took a commercial flight to Lagos, Nigeria, the most populous city in Africa, where he was hospitalized with fever, diarrhea, and vomiting. He told doctors in Lagos he had no exposure to Ebola. It was a nightmare in the making. (Businessweek)
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Europe's economy is looking frail again, but is it at risk of cardiac arrest? The banks at the heart of the eurozone economy are about to find out whether regulators will give them a clean bill of health, or send them back to the emergency room. European officials have just completed an extensive health check on the region's top 130 banks and are due to reveal the results Sunday. (CNN/Money)
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More business schools than ever are accepting an alternative to the Graduate Management Admissions Test, or GMAT, according to data released today by Kaplan Test Prep (GHC). Eighty-five percent of business school admissions officers surveyed by Kaplan said they now accept the Graduate Records Examination, or GRE, in place of the GMAT, up from just 24 percent in 2009. (Businessweek)
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Six months ago, one second-year MBA student at the Tuck School of Business boasted that "the job market is phenomenally frothy." He was as right as could be. Today (Oct. 22), Dartmouth College’s Tuck School published its Class of 2014 career stats and they are among the best ever reported by the prestige school. Salaries were slightly up and so were offers and acceptances three months after graduation. (Poets & Quants)
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The National Black MBA Association® provides financial support to students pursuing careers in business, academia, and related professions. Since inception, more than $5 million has been awarded to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. Our mission is to identify and increase the pool of Black talent for business, public, private, and non-profit sectors.
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Late in 2012, when Tim Cook was relatively fresh on the job as Apple’s chief executive, he made a sudden and potentially risky shuffle in the firm’s executive ranks. He fired Scott Forstall, who had been in charge of Apple’s mobile operating system, the most important piece of software Apple produced. Mr. Forstall had long been one of Steve Jobs’s favored lieutenants, but in addition to presiding over a couple of prominent failures – including Apple’s Maps app – he was known for his combativeness within the company. (The New York Times)
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Google released a new email app called Inbox, currently available only by invitation or request. But this app goes beyond just email: Google’s Inbox wants to organize your life. Inbox, which was released on Wednesday for Android, iOS and web, doesn’t have the ubiquitous email look and feel we are so used to. (Fast Company)
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Unfortunately, Google's new Inbox is invite only, meaning email junkies eager to get their hands on a new toy could be left refreshing their real inboxes for a while. The good news? Many of Inbox’s best features are available right now. That’s because Google’s new release isn’t quite the reinvention of email some sites are hailing it as. (Money)
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Entrepreneurship is trendy. It seems that everyone you meet nowadays is starting his or her own business, or knows someone who is. It's not your imagination, either: The Internet age and everything that goes along with it has made entrepreneurship more accessible than ever before. (Fox Business)
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In his book, Rich Habits – The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, Tom Corley outlines several habits that distinguish the wealthy from the nonwealthy. It got me to think, How many people operate on autopilot and don’t stop to monitor their everyday patterns? Below I've summarized 19 of his habits for success (nine culled from his book and the next 10 from his recent article in Success) plus two of my own. If you're not actively engaged in these 21 things, you are, in effect, leaving money on the table. (Entrepreneur)
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Do you know the difference between "fiscal" and "monetary"? Don’t feel bad. Neither did the British writer John Lanchester when he began work a decade or so ago on "Capital," his sweeping novel about contemporary London. To his annoyance, he realized that he lacked even the rudimentary vocabulary to write about one of the great forces driving life in that city: the financial system. (The New York Times)
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One of the least heralded events at Apple’s (AAPL) Sept. 9 unveiling of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus was its primer on Apple Pay. In an eight-second video, a woman holding an iPhone next to the credit card reader at a checkout counter placed her thumb over her phone’s Home button, which doubles as a fingerprint scanner. The device binged: transaction complete. "Would you like to see it one more time," Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook asked from the stage, "just in case you may have blinked and missed it?" (Businessweek)
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Tracy S., 59, a technical writer for a large bank, divorced her husband just as the housing market spiraled downward. They were forced to sell their home, just outside Phoenix, for less than they owed, and the bank agreed to absorb the difference, about $25,000. (The New York Times)
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The Web is full of personalized content, whether it’s a Netflix recommendation or the results of a Google search. But consumers have protested when e-commerce companies have extended their behind-the-scenes personalization to prices, charging different sums for the same goods, or pushing some people toward higher-priced offers. (The Wall Street Journal)
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The Wake Forest University School of Business said Wednesday that it is ending its full-time program for students pursuing master’s degrees in business administration, but will keep its part-time program aimed at working professionals, which offers classes at night and on weekends. (Winston-Salem Journal)
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On Tuesday, Michigan doubled down on a state law that forces car manufacturers to sell their vehicles through franchised dealerships. The move is a blow for automaker Tesla, which has been trying to bypass the dealerships in various states with mixed success. In the wake of that news, an astute reader asked a great question: If Tesla is so interested in getting its products into consumers' garages, why doesn't it just cooperate with existing franchise owners? (The Washington Post)
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Successful innovators care about solving interesting and important problems – innovation is merely a byproduct. If this distinction seems like hair-splitting, it isn’t. The two focuses create vastly different realities. Focusing on innovating – as a worthy goal unto itself – tends to be born from self-centered motives: We need to protect ourselves from competitive forces. We need to ensure we have a growth engine. We need to keep up with other companies. (Harvard Business Review)
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Research tells us diversity enables teams to work at full potential. The differences in gender, race, generation, culture, education, values, and economic background all play a hand at digging up different angles, examining not-so-obvious details, and constructive conversation surrounding the task at hand. (Fast Company)
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Leadership is all about making others feel valued, but it can be hard to carve out time from a busy schedule to connect. Good news! It takes only 30 seconds. (Inc.)
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I work in human resources at a midsize company that is trying to find a chief financial officer with a particular set of skills. A number of candidates have applied, and we’ve met with them. Impressive as they are, it seems to me that, to get the best person for the job, we’re going to have to pursue people who are already working for other companies, including one or two of our direct competitors. (Fortune)
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Looking for an airfare deal? Your odds improve if you buy on the weekend. A new deep dive into airline fares suggests Sunday is the best day to find low fares. This is a departure from the conventional wisdom of recent years, when Tuesday was considered the best bet. (The Wall Street Journal)
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It seems like every other day, news breaks about a recall on millions of cars that, if left unaddressed, could prove deadly. Here's what consumers can do to ensure their safety. (Money)
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