THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Faith

"Faith is a knowledge within the heart,beyond the reach of proof." - Kahlil Gibran

TOPIC OF THE DAY

A Faster Economy Needs Better Tools

In an event last spring in New York, I heard the story of a young man who received more than $90,000 for international software projects while he was collecting unemployment benefits. He hadn't had a visible full-time job in three years. But without tools designed for the new knowledge world, the government was unable to track that he was working, right in his room, for a small software company in Vietnam.

In the last few decades, the world has experienced series of booms and busts. Sometimes, we could blame them on lack of regulations, excessive greed, and so on. But what if we are in this vicious cycle because the economy has advanced beyond the tools developed long ago to track it?

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Money and Capital Markets: Financial Institutions and Instruments in a Global Marketplace By: Peter S. Rose, Milton H. Marquis

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Independent

"I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others." - Mohammed

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Internet Changes Everything — Except Four Things

At the e-G8 Forum in Paris this week, the Internet was venerated as a revolutionary force changing everything. French President Sarkozy, who commissioned the forum to provide recommendations to the G8 heads of state, was extravagant in his praise, calling it a new world and the eighth continent. Internet moguls from Facebook, Google, and Groupon were more subdued in their claims, undoubtedly cautious that France, Japan, America, and other sovereign nations are trying to plant their flags and impose their rules on the new world.

The fact of change is unmistakable. Every aspect of traditional industries is affected by Internet tools and social networks, as I proposed in my e-G8 talk for the plenary session on digital reinvention. The economic potential is starting to be measured. A McKinsey Global Institute study unveiled at e-G8 estimated that Internet economic output is bigger than Spain and growing faster than Brazil. Web-intensive SMEs grow twice as fast, export twice as much, and are more profitable than non-Web-enabled, the McKinsey study concluded.


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LATEST ARRIVALS

Money and Capital Markets: Financial Institutions and Instruments in a Global Marketplace By: Peter S. Rose, Milton H. Marquis

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Life

"Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late" - Benjamin Franklin

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Software testing

Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test.[1] Software testing also provides an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation. Test techniques include, but are not limited to, the process of executing a program or application with the intent of finding software bugs (errors or other defects).

Software testing can also be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product:

1.meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development;
2.works as expected; and
3.can be implemented with the same characteristics.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Money and Capital Markets: Financial Institutions and Instruments in a Global Marketplace By: Peter S. Rose, Milton H. Marquis

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Success

"Success may be delayed due to hurdles but never derailed." - Dr. Pravin Dhikale

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Three Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Sometimes when you're wondering what to do next in life, good advice can come when you least expect it — like when you're getting your hair cut.

Joan*, the hairstylist giving me a trim, mused aloud about what she was planning to do with her career. Cutting hair was just one part of her livelihood; she was also a professional caregiver as well as the owner of a rig that her husband operated.

But her husband was about to retire from the road, and now they were wondering, "What next?" Over the course of our brief conversation, in no more than the time it took Joan to cut my hair, I picked up on three attributes of her success that are helpful for any entrepreneur:

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Money and Capital Markets: Financial Institutions and Instruments in a Global Marketplace By: Peter S. Rose, Milton H. Marquis

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Job

"Many people quit looking for work when they find a job." - Anonymous

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Turning Down a Job Offer

You would have thought a friend or colleague crazy last year if they had asked for advice on how to turn down a job offer as everyone around you held on to their jobs for dear life. But as the economy slowly recovers, people are once again beginning to embrace something many considered long gone: choice.

If you are lucky enough to be in a position to choose between two offers or luckier still to have the ability to simply turn down a job that isn't quite right, your good fortune also brings with it a certain level of responsibility — that of declining the offer graciously and skillfully without burning bridges or creating ill-will.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Money and Capital Markets: Financial Institutions and Instruments in a Global Marketplace By: Peter S. Rose, Milton H. Marquis

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Mission

"A man with money is no match against a man on a mission." - Doyle Brunson

TOPIC OF THE DAY

How to Create an Effective Non-Profit Mission Statement

"Mission" for nonprofits is the same as "profits" for private sector companies. In the private sector, corporations achieve their goals by carefully designing business operations that are reflected in a budget and then regularly reporting on how actual profits compare to that budget. If mission accomplishment is as important as profit attainment, why do most nonprofits not spend equivalent time in mission creation and monitoring?

In reality, nonprofits often completely mess this up. As important as missions are, nonprofits frequently go off in ineffective directions by relying on mission statements that can be little more than slogans. At a time when nonprofits around the world are struggling both to stay afloat and to achieve their missions, they are missing out on one of the most valuable tools to available to them.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Success

"Success is never achieved by the size of the brain, but it is always achieved by the size of one's THOUGHTS." - Sandhya Nishad

TOPIC OF THE DAY

New Ways to Collaborate for Process Improvement

To make big improvements in productivity and customer service, people in an organization must collaborate across corporate hierarchies, functions, companies, and geographies. Emerging social networking technologies offer new ways to overcome these boundaries. Leading companies such as IBM, Ford, and Avery Dennison are making major improvements in key processes by creating online communities to share deep knowledge.

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Doing Things Right

"It takes less time to do things right than to explain why you did it wrong." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

TOPIC OF THE DAY

2 Tips for Making To-Do Lists that Work

For some people, to-do lists are life savers; they keep them organized and on task. For others, they're useless pieces of paper to ignore as they grow longer and longer. Next time you sit down to write a to-do list (or decide to face up to an existing one), follow these two tips:

1.Break it down. To-dos are not the same as goals or projects. Only include specific tasks that move a project toward completion. If a to-do list item is too large to get done in one step, break it down further.
2.Include specifics. Help your future self out by including details that will make doing the task easier. Instead of "Get in touch with Julie," try "Call Julie about next task force meeting at 555-5555."

Today's thought adapted from "Guide to Getting the Right Work Done." cited at HBR Management Tip of the Day

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Failure

"A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him. " - Elmer G. Letterman

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Right Way to Respond to Failure

My wife Eleanor and I were visiting some friends on a Saturday when their nine-year-old daughter, Dana*, came home. She was close to tears, barely holding it together.

"Oh sweetie," her mom said. "What happened at the swim meet?"

Dana is an excellent swimmer. She trains hard, arriving at swim practice by six most mornings and swimming some afternoons as well. And her efforts are rewarded; she often wins her events, scoring points for her swim team. It is clear she is very proud of these wins.

It isn't like that for all her endeavors. She struggles with some subjects in school, doing extra math homework to keep up with the other kids and getting special help with her reading. But she always works hard.

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Ideas

"Ideas are like wandering sons. They show up when you least expect them." - Bern Williams

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Right Way to Get Your Ideas Heard

The crossing light is already flashing red, reminding you to speed it up. You're in the middle of rush hour, fighting swarms of people, while simultaneously tapping out a message to wrap up that urgent issue back at the office. All around you — hustling and bustling — are people headed to the grocery store, to the gym, to... somewhere.

Nearby, you hear this voice, asking... "Do you have two minutes to...?"

Will you stop to listen? Not very likely, is it?

Work looks a lot like that busy street corner. Hustling to keep up, our colleagues are taking on more and working harder. Even strategic issues are getting shorted; we spend less than two percent of our time discussing strategic issues. Given this context, new ideas have a tough time being heard. It's no wonder that our colleagues resort to some aggressive approaches to get theirs on our radar screens. Here are some that I've seen recently:.......

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Leadership

"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders,not more followers." - Ralph Nader

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Small Wins and Feeling Good

When you have a daunting mountain to climb, it is often best to break it into molehills. In his classic paper, "Small Wins," University of Michigan psychologist Karl Weick argued that large social problems are best broken down into smaller ones with concrete achievable goals. Social problems as enormous as, say, unemployment, can be so overwhelming that solutions seem unattainable; therefore, people often avoid tackling them or come up with single, grand programs that fail. Breaking such problems down into a series of more modest steps, all on the path to the ultimate goal, reduces fear, clarifies direction, and increases the probability of early successful outcomes - boosting support for further action.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Quality

"The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives." - Anthony Robbins

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Most Valuable People in Your Network

Too often new collaborative technologies — though intended to connect employees seamlessly and enable work to get done more efficiently — are misused in ways that impede innovation and hurt performance.

Age-old wisdom suggests it is not what but whom you know that matters. Over decades this truism has been supported by a great deal of research on networks. Work since the 1970s shows that people who maintain certain kinds of networks do better: They are promoted more rapidly than their peers, make more money, are more likely to find a job if they lose their own, and are more likely to be considered high performers.

But the secret to these networks has never been their size. Simply following the advice of self-help books and building mammoth Rolodexes or Facebook accounts actually tends to hurt performance as well as have a negative effect on health and well-being at work. Rather, the people who do better tend to have more ties to people who themselves are not connected. People with ties to the less-connected are more likely to hear about ideas that haven't gotten exposure elsewhere, and are able to piece together opportunities in ways that less-effectively-networked colleagues cannot.

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Qualification

"In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head." - Arthur Schopenhauer

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Should You Hire an Overqualified Candidate?

As politicians and economists puzzle over America's jobless recovery, managers who have started to hire again face another problem: how to handle all the overqualified candidates coming through their doors. The prevailing wisdom is to avoid such applicants. But the unprecedented availability of top talent created by this recession and new research on the success of these candidates may be changing that.

What the Experts Say
Recruiters have traditionally hesitated to place overqualified candidates because of several presumed risks, says Berrin Erdogan, a professor of management at Portland State University and the lead author of a recent study on the subject. "The assumption is that the person will be bored and not motivated, so they will underperform or leave." However, her research shows that these risks may be more perceived than real. In fact, sales associates in her study who were thought to be overqualified actually performed better. And rarely do people move on simply because they feel they're too talented for the job. "People don't stay or leave a company because of their skills. They stay or leave because of working conditions" she says.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Fear

"Those who fear life are already three parts dead." - Bertrand Russell

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Turning the Tables on a Fear-Mongering Attack

Fear is a very powerful emotion. And fear-mongering is one of the most effective attack strategies for killing good ideas. Fear-mongerers raise anxiety and make a thoughtful examination of a proposal difficult, if not impossible. One very common fear-based counter-argument to a new idea is the claim: "You and your proposal are abandoning our core values!"

Now, let's assume for argument's sake that your proposal does not compromise your company's values. Nevertheless, any hint that your idea jeopardizes something as sacred as the company's values can be a show-stopping invocation. Suddenly, you are made to appear to the group as if you are arguing against the tradition, spirit, and foundation of your company! You ask yourself, "How did this happen?" and more importantly, "How can I fix it?" The answer is relatively simple: immediately reframe the discussion by calmly describing how your proposal actually upholds the company's values.

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Talent

"The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms" - Holmes

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Be Your Own Talent Scout

How do you go about finding the right candidate for a job? If you are like most people, you look around for the right internal candidate. If that doesn't work out, then you conduct an outside search. To do this, you go fishing — placing ads and hiring recruiters, and then seeing what lands in your net. You might find a few competent candidates this way, but odds are you certainly won't get the real talent you need.
By "talent," I mean three things.

Competence, of course, is critical — the candidate must be able to do required tasks well. But equally important is character, by which I mean solid ethics and especially the ability to inspire trust. And he or she must play demonstrably well with others on the team. I've learned that if a person doesn't have all three of those characteristics in spades, it becomes very difficult to do my job, and for others to do theirs.

Finding people with the right combination of competence, character and team skills isn't easy, of course, even if you conduct a long, carefully-orchestrated search. To find these people, you have to develop a long-term, very consistent strategy. Here are some things that have worked very well for me:

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Patience

"Patience is like learning the piano. There's no point in praying for the ability if you don't practice." - Robert Burrell

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Better Innovation Architecting

One tried-and-true innovation trick is to look for analogies. When you feel like you're working on an intractable problem, find someone who has already solved the problem, but in a different context. Apply their learning to your situation, and see where it takes you.

Let's practice by using this approach on the act of innovation itself. What do innovators do? At a basic level, they transform a blank piece of paper into a successful growth business. Can you think of anyone else who faces the same challenge? Architects would seem to fit the bill.

Think about how architects approach the blank-sheet-of-paper challenge. They don't just start by building a business. Instead they sketch or create physical or computer models to bring their ideas to life. The design community calls this "rapid prototyping."

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Power

"The power of knowledge destroys ignorance; The power of light dissipate darkness;The power of truth is foe of all untruth; The sharana's experience of god is the sole cure of worldliness; " - Lord Kudala Sangamadeva

TOPIC OF THE DAY

When Hiring Graduates, Avoid These Mistakes

It's that time of year again, and many a manager's inbox has become flooded with the résumés of (very) soon-to-be college graduates. And while most hiring managers are well-versed in best practices for recruiting Millennials, it's amazing to us — as somewhat recent graduates ourselves — how many firms still make the same mistakes when hiring "the best" of Gen Y.

Take this example from our experience of one old-school hiring process, in which an IT firm disheartened several qualified candidates with an overly formal and invasive first-round interview. After a three-hour initial meeting, the firm had mentally drained the young candidates with surprise skill assessment tests and a last-minute decision to have them re-screened by multiple executives. To make matters worse, the candidates were confined to just a couple of rooms — and the company failed to give any insight, spoken or demonstrated, into the office environment. The group left exhausted, without any idea of the company's culture or values. One candidate, believing two hours worth of quarters would suffice for parking, returned from the interview to find a parking ticket on her windshield.

Read on...

LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Business

"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming." - Richard Branson

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Three Networks You Need

We all know how important networks are in all the different parts of our lives: medical and health, financial and legal, and especially in work and career. What many don't know is that to be successful as a manager and leader you need not one but three networks: operational, developmental, and strategic.

First, of course, is the network of those you and your group need to do your day-to-day work. These are people in other units of the company, and outside, on whom and on whose work you depend to do your work. This is your operational network. Those in it don't work for you but your success depends on them. It also includes those who depend on you and your group to do their work. Though you may not need them, their demands on you can have a big impact on how you spend your time and attention.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Imagination

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will." - Peter G. Kimble

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Making the Business Case for Sustainability

In 2010, the United Nations Global Compact conducted a survey [PDF] on sustainability and found that 93% of businesses consider it important to their future success.

But most companies also have investors to please, and — let's face it — making the business case for sustainability can be difficult. As CEO of an analytics firm, I can say that we are seeing a surge in interest among Fortune 500 companies for analytical models that help determine the impact of going green on their bottom line.


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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Brands

"Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." - Walter Landor

TOPIC OF THE DAY

What Is Your Brand Against?

Companies understand that to be successful they and their brands need to stand for something. This results in bold and principled declarations to the world: "At Acme Amalgamated, we're committed to X. We believe in Y. We care passionately about Z." Unfortunately, in the end, it all starts to sound like generic ad-speak.

Here's a modest suggestion: If you really want to show the world what you believe in and stand for, how about telling us what you stand against?

Recently, my agency StrawberryFrog launched a new campaign for smart car that was rooted in this kind of oppositional thinking. We understood that the smart car brand stands for some pretty good things: efficiency, economy, reduced environmental footprint. But put way, it sounds rather dull and predictable.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Selling

"Describe your product in terms of what it "does"not in terms of what it "is".
- Brian Tracy

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Founder's Dilemma: To Sell or Not to Sell?

We recently did an informal survey of some of our venture capital colleagues. We asked, "What crossroads decisions are most common and challenging for entrepreneurs in the course of the business-building journey?"

The most common responses to this open-ended question were whether to take an investment and whether to sell the company. For some the decision to take OPM (other people's money) is the beginning of having decided to sell. So it's a similar crossroads — involving a trade-off between control and value creation. It is, as Harvard Business School Professor Noam Wasserman has neatly dubbed it, the "Rich versus King" dilemma.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice by H. Kent Baker (Editor), Ronald Anderson (Editor)