April 2009
“For startups and smaller organizations, alliances can reduce costs of...”
– Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter
via Does Your Company Need Friends With Benefits?
By Sean Silverthorne
“The ones that I did enjoy and/or use included:
San Francisco Chronicle coffee...”
– CC Holland
“The general point here is to make sure you evaluate innovations through the...”
– BofA’s New ATMs the Wrong Kind of Innovation By Sean Silverthorne April 16th, 2009 @ 11:48 am
Have you encountered the latest-generation of ATMs, which Bank of America is starting to deploy? To deposit checks and cash to your account, you run them through an optical scanner, which reads...
How to Empower Employees With the Illusion of... →
According to a study published inPsychological Science, the more power people have, the more power they think they have. Like a gambler on a winning streak who believes he can affect the cards being dealt, powerful individuals’ feelings of control often extend to circumstances in which they are helpless to determine the outcomes.
“Our research found that power led to perceived control over...
Five Ways Managers Breed Incompetence →
Using numbers as the only device to measure performance.
Spreading workers too thin: cost-cutting is an essential component of survival, but it’s also a quick and dirty way to overburden competent employees, thus breeding incompetence… If staff must be cut, companies need to make a bigger effort to help remaining employees stay competent. Is there room in the budget for contractors? How about...
“A Dutchwoman explains her nation’s flag to an American friend. “It symbolizes...”
– Anon via lickystickypicky
“Nine-to-five is back in vogue for a growing number of high-level women — and, in...”
– Hannah Seligson from Forbes.com
The Paradox of Thrift →
A recent store visit underscores just how dramatically spending habits have changed in the past few months. A woman dressed in cashmere, accented with a whisper of Hermes, stood in a long line of customers at Jack’s 99-Cent Store in Manhattan. After asking a neighbor to hold her place, she rushed back with a 10-pack of disposable razors.
Half-apologetically, she commented, “I never used to shop at...
“The Sun’s return to your sign is an energy booster and can restore your...”
Entrepreneurs don’t really learn much from... →
What they do learn from is success.
That’s a rather surprising finding from recent research at Harvard Business School, conducted by professors Paul Gompers, Josh Lerner and David Scharfstein. In their study of several thousand venture-backed concerns, the authors found:
First-time entrepreneurs receiving VC funding had a 22 percent chance of success, defined as taking a company...
lickystickypicky:
Bette Midler - In my life
All...
WatchHow to Approach an Underdressed Employee
Tips on Managing in a Recession from Tom Peters →
Declining profits and the specter of lay-offs are haunting many a company, and managers are wondering how they can keep morale up and their companies afloat through these challenging times. As a respected management expert, Peters gets this question a lot and, recently on his blog, he gave his unvarnished answer. There are no quick fixes or easy solutions when it comes to managing in a recession,...
Tips for Minimizing Meetings from Seth Godin →
Time and brain cells wasted in useless discussion is a common complaint in offices, but a manager’s fate does not have to be a slow death by painful and unproductive meetings, Godin insists. On his blog, he’s offering nine suggestions for how managers can signal to their teams that they are serious about limiting the time spent in the conference room and serious about getting something out of...
McKinsey’s Three Tips for Planning out the Rest of... →
1) Be realistic; it’s still ugly out there: “since the heart of scenario planning—crafting a number of strategies for different outcomes—has become significantly more complex, strategists should prepare for a more demanding process of gathering information, exploring possibilities, and plain old hard thinking.”
2) Monitor, monitor, monitor: “The company’s strategy, in short, must account for many...
John Chambers on Managing for the Upturn →
It was hard for me, because I am very comfortable with command and control. So moving away from what was working was hard. At first it was frustrating. I’d get my team together and watch them work on an issue, and I’d usually know what the answer would be within the first 10 or 15 minutes. But over time, they [began getting to] a better decision than I would have made. It’s almost like a parent...
Surfing the Net at Work Boosts Productivity, Study... →
People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20 percent of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9 percent than those who don’t. Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost...
“Although you may not yet have a solution for a tense social situation, you are...”
“It is with great sadness that I report that President Papadakis passed away...”
– Chairman Richard A. Greenawalt
“A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
– Confucius