Conventional thinking has suggested that leadership positions go to those who aggressively plan their careers with a keen eye for building the right skills to reach top jobs. Others believe that leaders are born, not made. But according to research one of us (Julia) conducted for her book Pivot Points, the key differentiator between the career arc of someone who becomes a successful business leader and the average person is consistency in how the person makes major decisions. (Harvard Business Review)

Bernard Tyson, chairman and chief executive of Kaiser Permanente – the $56 billion non-profit health insurer and hospital operator – is more optimistic about America’s healthcare system than he’s ever been. That’s saying something, given that the fate of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance pending a Supreme Court ruling due in June. (Fortune)

The world of work is rapidly changing, and, with it, employees' attitudes about what's acceptable on the job. Covering up that you were fired? Fine with many. Not having a professional social network profile? A total deal breaker for most. "Fifty-six percent of U.S. workers reported that if they were fired from a job, they would work to hide this information." These evolving attitudes about work were the focus of The New Norms @Work survey, which polled 15,075 full-time workers between 18 and 66 years of age in 19 countries. (Fast Company)

Before there was a funeral and protest, then violence, curfews and canceled ballgames in Baltimore this week, there were other chapters in the life of this city that must be remembered. From 1951 to 1971, 80 to 90 percent of the 25,000 families displaced in Baltimore to build new highways, schools and housing projects were black. Their neighborhoods, already disinvested and deemed dispensable, were sliced into pieces, the parks where their children played bulldozed. (The Washington Post)

There’s nothing more infuriating than someone taking credit for your work. We’ve all had this happen at one point or another: you share an idea with a colleague and then hear him repeat it in a meeting; you stay late to finish a presentation yet your team member accepts all the praise; you lead a long overdue project to completion and your boss tells the higher-ups it was his doing. How should you handle these situations? Is it okay to speak up right then and there? Or should you keep quiet? And how can you make sure that you get the credit you deserve in the future? (Harvard Business Review)

There’s a reason this tweet, sent at 9 a.m. on March 1st, amassed nearly 4,000 retweets and over 2,000 favorites in a matter of hours. Eli Langer, who runs social media at CNBC, isn’t the only one with a crazy amount of unread emails. These days, maintaining "inbox zero" is a feat of diligent OCD. Of course, what can we expect when of the nearly 200 billion emails sent every day worldwide (84% are considered spam). That’s 168 billion emails . . . disregarded. You might be tempted to think that just applies to marketing emails. But you’d be wrong. (Fast Company)

Depending on whom you ask, this attitude may be a relic of workplaces past. According to a 2014 study by Bentley University, 70% of respondents in older generations believe that Millennials are not as willing to pay their dues – and 74% believe these young workers don’t have as strong a work ethic. Meanwhile, Millennials polled don’t seem to equate paying dues with working hard: 89% believe they have a strong work ethic, but only 55% say they’re willing to pay their dues. (Fast Company)

Yet although these technologies eliminated some jobs for clerks and warehouse laborers, they also created new jobs by creating new capabilities. However, these new jobs require specialized skills among both the managers and technicians, who typically have college degrees, as well as among the less educated operational occupations. Workers who have these skills, often learned on the job, are actually in short supply. (The Atlantic)

More than 1,600 companies participated in the survey in 2015. There is no fee involved to participate and every company receives a free report card assessing its performance against all competitors. The survey, now in its 16th year, leads to a detailed, empirically driven ranking. The free report card assesses performance based on four key areas of diversity management. (DiversityInc.)

The contrast between companies whose rankings keep improving and those on a steady decline is in their human-capital results. Our data demonstrates that results are tied to top-down attention to the numbers and the process, as well as best practices that broaden knowledge about talent development, such as mentoring and resource groups. (DiversityInc.)

Greece, mired in a protracted financial crisis and at loggerheads with its bailout stewards, will leave the euro, according to the majority of investors, analysts, and traders in a Bloomberg survey. Fifty-two percent of the respondents in the Bloomberg Markets Global Poll believe the cash-strapped country will leave the 19-nation bloc at some point, compared with 43 percent who see Greece remaining in the euro for the foreseeable future. (Bloomberg)

With China’s central bank injecting cash in the financial system to support growth, commentators have been quick to dub it the start of Chinese-style quantitative easing. Analogies can be useful for explaining complex financial matters, but in this instance the comparison is more misleading than helpful. "QE" is a poor description of the way Chinese monetary policy works. It also overstates the degree of easing the central bank is undertaking. (The Economist)

For many, the GMAT acts like a security guard. You can almost imagine a squinting and scowling figure, whose burly figure cuts you off from heading to business school with the cool kids. But what if the GMAT was really more like your favorite teacher? This person may have pushed you, but you came away far better for it. Sangeet Chowfla, president and CEO of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), sees the GMAT as the latter: a tool that provides guidance on what your capabilities are and where you should invest your efforts. (Poets & Quants)

Business schools are supposed to produce graduates who have the abilities companies need most. But corporate recruiters say some highly sought-after skills are in short supply among newly minted MBAs. As part of our ranking of 122 top business programs, Bloomberg surveyed 1,320 job recruiters at more than 600 companies to find out which skills employers want but can’t find – and which B-schools are best at meeting the needs of the market. (Bloomberg)

Tickets Just $150: Buy Tickets Now for the NBMBAA 45th Anniversary Celebration, June 12 in Chicago

As a valued supporter of the National Black MBA Association’s legacy, we invite you to join us on Friday, June 12, as we celebrate 45 years of creating economic, educational and employment opportunities for Blacks in the business world. Plan now to attend this extraordinary event. Buy early and take advantage of $150 tickets before the price goes up!

HONOREES
Amy Hilliard, President, Fashion Fair Cosmetics
Don Thompson, retired President and Chief Executive Officer, McDonald's Corporation 

ENTERTAINMENT
Terisa Griffin, as seen on season 3 of "The Voice" 

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Celebrating 45 years of Black professional development and executive leadership, The National Black MBA Association® (NBMBAA®), the nation's premier organization for Black business professionals, today announced early bird registration is open for  the upcoming NBMBAA® 37th Annual Conference and Exposition at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL where more than 9,000 attendees are anticipated to convene for networking, leadership development, and career opportunities.

Visit Conference Website
Register Now!

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It's fair enough to wonder if one more app is the solution to your app addiction, but the question of whether these tools work is one that science can actually answer, and a recent study offers some good news to those hoping that a tech tool can save them from their tendency to procrastinate.(Inc.)

It’s fundamentally different than Internet Explorer. Microsoft is embracing the new generation of lightweight, faster browsers like Google’s Chrome with a new name and branding for its Project Spartan browser project. The newly christened Edge browser will be part of the new Office 10 suite of products and was unveiled yesterday at the Microsoft Build developer conference in San Francisco.(Fortune)

Apple is riding higher than ever, thanks to soaring iPhone sales, especially in China. Demand for the Apple Watch has been intense, and the company is making more money than ever from its App Store. There was just one piece of bad news for the company in Monday’s otherwise glowing earnings report: iPad sales are down – again. Apple sold just 12.6 million of its sleek tablets in the first three months of 2015, down from 16.4 million in the same quarter a year ago. (Slate)

So many CEOs talk about their firms being "one big family" that it's become the stuff of platitude. Likewise, any start-up VC will tell you that "breaking down silos" and promoting horizontal accountability – "data over eminence" – is the most productive way to organize teams. Yet you wouldn't think there's been a CEO that's embraced both principles since the Johnson administration – until you've heard from Art Gensler. (Inc.)

For the risk-averse, raiding your savings account or taking out a big loan to start a business or make a career change might seem like a fool’s game. A bird in hand, you know. But, in the words of Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, "Never was anything great achieved without danger." So opportunity sometimes demands calculated risks in pursuit of your dreams, whether they be buying a lavish home, retiring early, giving generously to charity or family, or taking charge of your work environment. (Kiplinger's)

The latest GDP figures for the U.S. shows the economy has virtually ground to a halt as first quarter growth was just 0.2%. That's 0.2% growth, on an annualised basis, so that means that there was negligible growth in the first three months of the year relative to the previous quarter. The biggest drag on that growth was exports. (BBC News)

JPMorgan Chase recently sent a letter to some of its large depositors telling them it didn’t want their stinking money anymore. Well, not in those words. The bank coined a euphemism: Beginning on May 1, it said, it will charge certain customers a "balance sheet utilization fee" of 1 percent a year on deposits in excess of the money they need for their operations. That amounts to a negative interest rate on deposits. The targeted customers – mostly other financial institutions – are already snatching their money out of the bank. Which is exactly what Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon wants. The goal is to shed $100 billion in deposits, and he’s about 20 percent of the way there so far. (Bloomberg)

Raising a child has never been cheap. But millennials starting a family today face a double disadvantage that makes it more difficult to have children than it was for their parents or grandparents. Not only is it ever more expensive to have a child, but many young workers today struggle with stagnant or falling wages, leaving them less equipped to cope with those rising costs. (The Washington Post)

How do parents feel about saving for college? How many different words are there for anxious? In a survey of 1,988 parents released today, the majority of parents described saving for college with words like "worried," "frustrated," and "overwhelmed." (Money)

By any measure, Twitter hit particularly rough conditions on Tuesday night, which sent its share price into a tailspin. At one point in the final hours of trading, the stock had lost more than $8bn (£5bn), or 25% of its opening price. It seems investors were spooked by the early and unintended publication of earnings results that should have been presented after the markets had closed. So how did that happen, and why did it result in Twitter's worst day on the markets since its flotation? (BBC News)

The percentage of chief executive officers with MBA degrees has been steadily rising at the world’s largest publically traded companies. The Fortune 500, which ranks companies by total revenue, boasts chief executives who studied at business schools like Harvard, Chicago Booth and Wharton, based on data from 2014. Apple, AT&T and General Motors are all led by MBAs. (BusinessBecause)

Thirty-five years ago, the United States ranked 13th among the 34 industrialized nations that are today in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of life expectancy for newborn girls. These days, it ranks 29th. In 1980, the infant mortality rate in the United States was about the same as in Germany. Today, American babies die at almost twice the rate of German babies. (The New York Times)

Brian Fitzpatrick joined Google as a senior software engineer in 2005, shortly after the company’s IPO. Brian specialized in open-source software development and he quickly became a champion within the company for various initiatives focused on end users. One such project addressed a user’s control of his personal data. Brian started out working with two like-minded colleagues, but he soon attracted a broader team of coders and supporters. (Harvard Business Review)

Ask any CEO about the key to staying competitive and talent will undoubtedly rank high on the list. But attracting and retaining the best workers is a moving target. That's according to Josh Bersin, principal at Deloitte Consulting, who recently surveyed more than 3,000 people in a variety of industries about challenges they're seeing in the labor market, HR technology, employee engagement and work-life balance. Here's a handful of questions you need to ask yourself if you want to attract and retain the smartest and most capable employees in 2015 and beyond. (Inc.)

Though more and more Americans are hitting major milestones – like moving in together, buying homes, and having kids – without ever tying the knot, the institution of marriage still plays a pretty important role American life. More than a simple social benchmark, marriage is also an important factor in creating family structures, which shape children's educational and economic trajectory, and can set a course for whether each successive generation does better than the last. (The Atlantic)

"In most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again." That quote was made famous by Harvard psychologist William James in his 1890 book The Principles of Psychology, and is believed to be the first time modern psychology introduced the idea that one’s personality becomes fixed after a certain age. More than a century since James’s influential text, we know that, unfortunately, our brains start to solidify by the age of 25, but that, fortunately, change is still possible after. The key is continuously creating new pathways and connections to break apart stuck neural patterns in the brain. (Fast Company)