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An Earful of Social Networking: IT Conversations interviews with Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations." Clay thinks more than is good for him about social networking, an area that is generating huge interest as a business tool (if not profits, as this blog post by Spencer Ante...; Posted by Michael Fitzgerald in Big Think on: May 15, 2008 8:07 PM
Five Reasons Why Global Moves Are Good For Your Firm: A new McKinsey survey (subscription required) of leading multinational firms has come up with a surprising result -- that movement of employees around different countries is still limited and that employees fear that time overseas will somehow penalize their careers. McKinsey came up with the results in a May report...; Posted by Peter Galuszka in The Corner Office on: May 15, 2008 5:25 PM
Bruce Lee's 5 Rules for Personal Productivity: Famed martial artist and actor Bruce Lee was undoubtedly an icon and a trailblazer. But did you know he was also a personal productivity guru? Well, maybe not exactly. But The Positivity Blog notes that several of his fundamental beliefs for life can translate pretty well into guidelines for personal...; Posted by CC Holland in Team Taskmaster on: May 15, 2008 5:23 PM
Use FuelFrog to Keep Track of Your Mileage: FuelFrog is a nifty little app that allows you to keep track of your driving, your fuel economy, and your gas expenses. It's no more than a tricked-out excel page, really, except for one killer feature: it's integrated with Twitter. That means that whenever you hit the gas station, you...; Posted by David Goldenberg in Business Hacks on: May 15, 2008 3:00 PM
Bush Online Interview a Wake-up Call for PR: George Bush's online on-camera interview this week on the web site Politico marks a turning point in the use of the media -- one that the C-suite ought to take note of. The interview itself is unremarkable -- it's the decision to do an interview online that's worth noting. Somewhere...; Posted by Jon Greer in Catching Flack on: May 15, 2008 11:36 AM
Gen X is Unhappy at Work: Workers in their 30s and early 40s, otherwise known as Generation X, are growing unhappy with corporate life and planning a retreat, says Tammy Erickson, an expert on generational work force issues. That's bad news for their employers, who are looking to this cohort as next generation leaders. Why...; Posted by Sean Silverthorne in The View from Harvard Business on: May 15, 2008 10:55 AM
In the UK, the CEO Path Runs Through Finance First: The Find: If you want to get to the top of a large UK company, stay away from a new-fangled interest in soft skills and stick to mastering finance. The Source: An analysis of the career paths of the CEOs atop the FTSE 100 and Standard & Poor's Global...; Posted by Jessica Stillman in BNET1 on: May 15, 2008 10:15 AM
The Ethics of Saying No: Corporations do not make ethical mistakes. Individuals make ethical mistakes. Most of the time, that's because they're afraid of saying no. The reason so many people find it hard to say no is that it is hard to say no. A client says something inappropriate; a co-worker pulls a fast...; Posted by William Baker in Where's the Line? on: May 15, 2008 10:12 AM
How to Handle a Hiring Freeze With Finesse: Chances are you've been there, on one side of the fence or the other. You're looking to hire a new employee when -- whoops! -- the powers that be yank your budget. Or you've been interviewing for a plum position and suddenly it's no longer available. Hiring freezes are an...; Posted by CC Holland in Team Taskmaster on: May 15, 2008 10:11 AM
Why You Should Use a Credit Card for Airplane Tickets: If you routinely charge plane tickets to a debit card, stop. The New York Times explains why you should always use a credit card for your flight purchases: Under the federal Fair Credit Billing Act, a credit card company is required to return your money for a service not supplied,...; Posted by Rick Broida in Business Hacks on: May 15, 2008 5:00 AM
Nine Perfect Sales Conversation Helpers: To move a sale forward during the initial conversations, you must keep the prospect engaged. As I pointed out in a previous post ("Better Questions=Faster Selling"), the best way to do this is to ask an open-ended question that moves the conversation forward and also builds rapport. The easiest...; Posted by Geoffrey James in Sales Machine on: May 15, 2008 4:33 AM
Nassim Taleb Thinks Everyone Is Stupid: Wall Street's ability to plan for risk is a joke, as far as Nassim Nicholas Tasseb is concerned. Tasseb tells Fortune in Fear of a Black Swan that as "portfolio models got worse and worse in tracking reality, their use kept increasing as if nothing was happening. Why?" Two reasons,...; Posted by Michael Fitzgerald in Big Think on: May 14, 2008 8:19 PM
Visualize Your Hard Drive: As Rick has mentioned before, one of the best ways to free up space on your hard drive is to get a birds-eye view of all the stuff you've got on there and then bulk delete the stuff you've got no use for (say, temporary internet files). I tried...; Posted by David Goldenberg in Business Hacks on: May 14, 2008 2:37 PM
What Makes a Good Press Release Today?: Search around the web on Google News or elsewhere for the day's round of press releases and you're likely to find a vast majority still being written and distributed in the pseudo-news format that has been prevalent for decades. I'm not exactly sure why this model gained supremacy, because it...; Posted by Jon Greer in Catching Flack on: May 14, 2008 12:27 PM
Such Is The Importance of Ethics: When we're talking about establishing an ethical business culture, the small things matter. Yet, too often, we let the small things slide, we turn the other way, we don't make it our business. Here's a comment from a reader that addresses how the small things -- the ethics of soft...; Posted by William Baker in Where's the Line? on: May 14, 2008 11:47 AM
GM's Lender/Borrower Double Standard?: Are the folks at General Motors guilty of a double-standard, or hypocrisy, or possibly even an ethical breach, for the very different ways it's behaving as a lender and a borrower in the mortgage mess? They're at least guilty of not doing unto others as they would have done unto...; Posted by William Baker in Where's the Line? on: May 14, 2008 9:49 AM
Wanna Show Managerial Determination? Cross Your Arms: The Find: If you’re stuck with a challenging problem and looking for an extra dose of perseverance, simply crossing your arms might help. The Source: “The Effect of Arm Crossing on Persistence and Performance,” a new study in the European Journal of Social Psychology, cited in the British Psychological...; Posted by Jessica Stillman in BNET1 on: May 14, 2008 7:39 AM
Rate Your Marketing Team!: The whole point of Marketing is to make selling easier. Unfortunately, many marketing groups think their job is to "drive" sales. As a result, they waste big bucks on nonsense and fluff. That increases the cost of sales, which inevitably results in smaller commissions for the sales team. Since...; Posted by Geoffrey James in Sales Machine on: May 14, 2008 5:10 AM
Add SMS Features to Your Site with BeamMe.Info: BeamMe.Info adds a "send to mobile" button to your Web site, delivering whatever kind of content you wish to users' cell phones via SMS. That's a potentially huge bit of added value for your site, especially if it generates unique information that would be useful on a phone. (The...; Posted by Rick Broida in Business Hacks on: May 14, 2008 5:00 AM
Bring Back the Typing Pool: There's just so much to distract us these days, isn't there? Bring back the discipline of the typing pool I say. Well, maybe not. If we see distractions for what they are and confront rather than succumb, we can quickly get on with tackling our real business priorities. Here...; Posted by Robert Gerrish in Aussie Rules on: May 13, 2008 7:52 PM
Do Markets Have Morals?: I think markets have blind spots, along with a certain caustic wit. But the Templeton Foundation has been funding research into what you might call the two sides of Adam Smith, melding the free-market capitalism of "The Wealth of Nations" with the moral philosophy of its predecessor, "The Theory of...; Posted by Michael Fitzgerald in Big Think on: May 13, 2008 7:10 PM
Is Hot Desking a Cool Idea -- or a Catastrophe?: My brother, a muckety-muck for storage vendor Sepaton, stopped by yesterday en route to Red Herring 100, where he's part of a panel discussing clean technology. Over lunch he told me that one of the speakers would be discussing new software to enable hot desking. Hot desking? Surely not the...; Posted by CC Holland in Team Taskmaster on: May 13, 2008 5:46 PM
Understanding Procrastination: This week, Slate is running a series of articles about that omnipresent elephant in the cubicle: procrastination. While most of the articles aren't exactly How-Not-To Guides, I did learn a little bit from skimming through a few of them. Emily Yoffe's piece taught me that procrastination is a learned...; Posted by David Goldenberg in Business Hacks on: May 13, 2008 2:37 PM
Power at Work: Why you Need it, How to Get it: For most managers, the real competition is not in the marketplace. It is sitting at a desk nearby. Managers compete with each other for limited resources -- money, promotions, bonuses. This is healthy for the organisation, even if it feels unhealthy for the manager. Organisations are set up for conflict....; Posted by Jo Owen in Sterling Performance on: May 13, 2008 11:37 AM
The Laws of Power 1-5: The more uncertain, ambiguous and challenging the situation becomes, the more likely a high political quotient (PQ) manager is to display certain behaviours. They can be described as the 10 laws of power -- the first five are below. 1. Take control Don't wait till you are CEO: high political...; Posted by Jo Owen in Sterling Performance on: May 13, 2008 11:31 AM
The Laws of Power 6-10: There are some behaviours that high PQ (political quotient) managers display repeatedly, like default settings in their mindset. They can be described as the 10 laws of power. Here are 6-10. 6. Be selectively unreasonable When you accept excuses, you accept failure. High PQ managers know when to stretch people...; Posted by Jo Owen in Sterling Performance on: May 13, 2008 11:26 AM
How to Influence People -- and Win Friends: The essence of PQ -- political quotient -- is making things happen through other people. You have to persuade them, sell them on your idea and agenda. The more senior you become, the more of a salesperson you become, spending less time doing things yourself and more time persuading colleagues,...; Posted by Jo Owen in Sterling Performance on: May 13, 2008 11:21 AM
Massey Energy: The CEO as Tough Guy: Donald L. Blankenship cuts against the usual grain of a modern CEO. He's a tough guy who is not afraid to speak his mind, beat back environmental critics, hamstring unions or put his money where his mouth is when it comes to political spending. He is the kind of executive...; Posted by Peter Galuszka in The Corner Office on: May 13, 2008 11:13 AM
Tick Tock: Tips for Allocating Your Time: Do you spend your work time as effectively as you could? Let me answer for you. No. Whether you are a CEO or front-line manager, we all squander our most valuable resource -- time -- like an untuned automobile wastes fuel. Our time to create real value for the organization...; Posted by Sean Silverthorne in The View from Harvard Business on: May 13, 2008 9:51 AM
There's No 'Mom' in Team: Just in time (okay, a day late) for Mother's Day comes an article in the Des Moines Register dissecting a new and disturbing trend: The interference of parents in the workplace. Blogger Rebecca Thurman defended this influence, claiming that Gen Y's helicopter parents are a good thing for the office....; Posted by CC Holland in Team Taskmaster on: May 13, 2008 9:06 AM
Euro v. U.S. Execs on Globalization: It's All About Retaining Talent: The Find: While 90 percent of CEOs worldwide view globalization as both inevitable and positive, American business leaders are significantly more worried about retaining talent in a flat world than their counterparts in Europe. The Source: The EquaTerra Globalization Study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of...; Posted by Jessica Stillman in BNET1 on: May 13, 2008 7:31 AM
Be a Great Leader -- and Have a Life: Total Leadership is about having a richer life, but work/life balance is the wrong metaphor. It signifies trade-offs, gaining in one area at the expense of another. The essence of being real, of acting with authenticity, is in knowing what you care about and then doing your best to be...; Posted by Stewart D Friedman in Sterling Performance on: May 13, 2008 6:21 AM
Are you a Total Leader?: A Total Leadership experiment is a planned change -- a doable stretch. It is deliberately aimed at making life demonstrably better in all four domains -- work, home, community, self. A quick review will show you the range of experiments and help you come up with ones that are best...; Posted by Stewart D Friedman in Sterling Performance on: May 13, 2008 6:16 AM
Add Vista-like Taskbar Previews to Windows XP with Visual Tooltip: Visual Tooltip adds thumbnail previews to the Windows taskbar, allowing you to see what's beneath each button when you mouse over it. Windows Vista offers similar functionality, but Visual Tooltip offers a ton of customization options. You can choose the size and opacity of the thumbnails, show them with or without titles, and...; Posted by Rick Broida in Business Hacks on: May 13, 2008 5:00 AM
How to Prospect Using Voice Mail: Unless you're psychic and know when a prospect is going to pick up the phone, you're going to be leaving voice messages sometimes. Here's how to up the chances that your target actually calls you back. Step 1. Research. Figure out the major challenges in the target's industry, the...; Posted by Geoffrey James in Sales Machine on: May 13, 2008 4:00 AM
How to Get Some IDEO Design Magic: Want to bring a little IDEO magic to your startup? Here's a primer from Sim Simeonov, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was at the Nantucket Conference recently. He blogged about the IDEO presence at the conference -- it had a design workshop and its CEO, Tim Brown, gave a...; Posted by Michael Fitzgerald in Big Think on: May 12, 2008 3:27 PM
Performance-Enhancing Drugs at Work: An Ethics Poll: Is the asterisk coming to the business world? The use of performance-enhancing drugs has clogged up the sports world for the last couple of years, but steroid and human growth hormone are not the only way to get a chemical advantage. What about the brain drugs, those things that improve...; Posted by William Baker in Where's the Line? on: May 12, 2008 3:07 PM
How to Pick an Afternoon Snack: Lots of folks claim that the easiest way to lose weight is to eat small meals supplemented by little snacks throughout the day. If that plan doesn't lead to eating fewer calories in general, then I'm a bit skeptical of its weight-loss benefits, but it does have a major perk...; Posted by David Goldenberg in Business Hacks on: May 12, 2008 2:42 PM
CEOs See Better Economy Ahead, Maybe: Some CEOs are seeing a light at the end of a dark, weak economy tunnel. I spoke with Andrew Cagnetta, CEO of Transworld Business Brokers, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. firm that tracks real estate trends. He sees a flat second quarter followed by improving profits in the third and fourth...; Posted by Peter Galuszka in The Corner Office on: May 12, 2008 10:32 AM
Does the CEO Track Include a Stop in 'Design Thinking'?: The find: An executive training program at Stanford claims executives can benefit from being taught to tinker like designers. The source: Work Matters, the blog of Bob Sutton, Stanford business school and author of "The No Asshole Rule" and other books. The takeaway: First there was Harvard Business Review’s...; Posted by Jessica Stillman in BNET1 on: May 12, 2008 9:26 AM
Bloggers Use Filtering to Fight Back Against PR Spam: In brief: Email filtering is now starting to be used by bloggers to block and delete PR spam before it even reaches the intended recipient There really haven't been many consequences to spamming journalists with unwanted PR pitches -- until now. In what is sure to be the beginning of...; Posted by Jon Greer in Catching Flack on: May 12, 2008 7:00 AM
So You Want to Negotiate with Wal-Mart: Wal-Mart is the kind of partner-distributor that can put your products on the map, not to mention in the black. But if you are lucky enough to land an agreement with the world's largest retailer, your work is only beginning. Now you have to negotiate terms, The Deal, and Wal-Mart...; Posted by Sean Silverthorne in The View from Harvard Business on: May 12, 2008 5:10 AM
Protect Your Notebook with the Doberman Laptop Defender: When you set up shop at the local Starbucks, Panera Bread, or wherever, nature will inevitably call -- forcing you to leave your notebook unattended while you answer. The Doberman Laptop Defender SE-2010 promises to stand guard, emitting a 100-decibel alarm if its motion sensor gets tripped. Just attach it...; Posted by Rick Broida in Business Hacks on: May 12, 2008 5:00 AM
Do You Secretly Hate Your Job?: "I hate being in Sales," a woman recently confessed to me. Even so, she's pretty successful, and was recently netting $40,000 a month in commissions. But here she was, telling me that she hated the very job that she was so good at. This surprised me, because I like to...; Posted by Geoffrey James in Sales Machine on: May 12, 2008 4:10 AM
Forget Me Not: Forgotten projects, misplaced business cards and failure to remember someone's name are all factors that undermine your success. Missed opportunities are commonplace but need not occur. Memory is a skill we can all develop and it's vital for creativity. People often ask me what the link is between memory, speed...; Posted by Jennifer Goddard in Aussie Rules on: May 11, 2008 7:57 PM
Productivity Tip: Have a Fun Day: Having fun outside of the office boosts productivity. Or so argues the blog Chief Happiness Officer, which suggests that companies would improve productivity by giving employees a fun day -- an extra day off and a little bit of money to go do something fun. To ensure that it's a...; Posted by Michael Fitzgerald in Big Think on: May 9, 2008 9:49 PM
Lessons Learned in Corporate Blogging: In brief: Lessons learned in corporate blogging from LinkedIn's corporate blogger, who also links to a post by a blogger at EMC Corp. about their lessons learned Face it -- if you don't already have a corporate blogging program, you're probably going to have one in the next couple of...; Posted by Jon Greer in Catching Flack on: May 9, 2008 12:03 PM
5 Ways to Foil Lunch Thieves: The top workplace etiquette complaint among office workers? Raiders of the lost lunch. A recent study found that a whopping 97.8 percent of office dwellers believed fridge thieves to be the worst offenders. The Lean Cuisine has left the building. The takeout has taken off. So what, you say? Shame...; Posted by CC Holland in Team Taskmaster on: May 9, 2008 9:34 AM
OpenOffice 3.0 Beta Adds Mac, Docx Support and More: Seems like just a month ago that Microsoft Office competitor OpenOffice.org trotted out version 2.4. Today the open-source office suite debuted its long-awaited 3.0 version (albeit in beta form), adding native support for Mac OS X, import filters for Office 2007, an updated interface, and countless other tweaks and improvements. For anyone...; Posted by Rick Broida in Business Hacks on: May 9, 2008 6:33 AM
Get Your Customer to Sell for You!: Sales managers are always insisting that sale reps should sell high, but that's not always practical. Some organizations push buying decisions so far up the chain that nobody except a CEO is likely to get face-time with the guy who's got the cash. The most obvious example of this is...; Posted by Geoffrey James in Sales Machine on: May 9, 2008 4:55 AM

Tick Tock: Tips for Allocating Your Time

How to Handle a Hiring Freeze With Finesse

GM's Lender/Borrower Double Standard?

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