Tag: Career

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News You Can Use: 5/10/2017

  • Microsoft’s CEO Just Gave Some Brilliant Career Advice…

    “I was reading it not in the context of business or work culture, but in the context of my children’s education. The author describes the simple metaphor of kids at school. One of them is a ‘know-it-all’ and the other is a ‘learn-it-all,’ and the ‘learn-it-all’ always will do better than the other one even if the ‘know-it-all’ kid starts with much more innate capability.”

    Going back to business: If that applies to boys and girls at school, I think it also applies to CEOs like me, and entire organizations, like Microsoft.”

    https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/microsofts-ceo-just-gave-some-brilliant-career-advice-here-it-is-in-one-sentence.html

  • How to plan for future supply chain leadership

    To keep up with the growing demand for supply chain leadership, companies need to have a succession plan that helps them identify and develop new leaders who can replace existing leaders as they transition out of the company. Unfortunately, most have no such plan in place. According to a recent study from the American Management Association, only 18 percent of managers and executives have a succession plan in place to respond to a sudden loss of key executives—not nearly enough to keep business productivity up as people retire, despite the added number of supply chain undergraduate and graduate programs.

    http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/news/20170428-how-to-plan-for-future-supply-chain-leadership/

  • Alison Bing: ” High-impact Travel”
  • Tech employees quit their jobs mostly because of unfair work environments, study says

    The study looked at four main types of unfair treatment, behaviors and experiences: unfair people management practices, stereotyping, sexual harassment and bullying/hostility. As it turns out, turnover due to unfairness is a $16 billion per year problem, according to the study. The silver lining, as pointed out in the study, is that people would be down to stay if companies took steps to improve culture.

    Other takeaways from the study were that experiences differ dramatically among groups of people, depending on their race, gender and sexual orientation. For LGBT people and women, bullying was the main reason for reporting unfairness. For people of color, stereotypes were the main driver for leaving due to unfairness. Nearly one in four people of color surveyed (23%) reported being stereotyped at past jobs.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/27/tech-employees-quit-their-jobs-mostly-because-of-unfair-work-environments-study-says/?ncid=rss

  • How to find friends when you move for your job

    Doing so takes a bit of creativity, plus courage to put yourself out there. Oh, and one other thing: “When you’re moving into a new community and trying to find your tribe, let your freak flag fly a little bit,” she says. It’s easier to find real friends when you’re sharing what you’re passionate about and not trying to fit in for the sake of making friends. Relationships built on false impressions aren’t the ones that are going to stick, anyway. And here are some ways you can find likely prospects.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40413637/how-to-find-friends-when-you-move-for-your-job

Photo: Sam Burriss

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News You Can Use: 5/3/2017

  • Tech Firms, Cable Companies Take Sides in Net-Neutrality Battle

    Mr. Pai has said he wants to eliminate what he regards as the excesses of the Obama -era rule, while preserving the basic principles of net neutrality.

    His plan—to be announced in a speech to conservative groups—is expected to focus on building a case for rolling back the reclassification of internet providers as common carriers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-firms-cable-companies-take-sides-in-net-neutrality-battle-1493200800

  • How the most productive CEOs keep email in check

    Brad Smith, the CEO of Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and parent company of Mint, sums up his email approach as “read, act, file, or delete.” By limiting himself to these four options—and requiring that he performs one of them—Smith says he manages to clear his inbox daily without the help of an assistant. It “requires real commitment,” he concedes, but the goal is simple: “Never touch something more than once.” In order to leave time for regular inbox maintenance, Smith schedules meetings that can’t run longer than 45 minutes so he can catch up on emails during the 15 minutes in between meetings.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40407454/how-the-most-productive-ceos-keep-email-in-check

  • Why It’s Good to Think You’re Bad at Your Job

    In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Chris Haddon sits down with Mike McDevitt, CEO of Terra’s Kitchen and former CEO of Medifast. In the interview, McDevitt talks about Terra’s Kitchen, a Baltimore-based food delivery service, why he thinks retail grocery is the last “fat and happy” retail industry and how his company is tapping into an unmined industry.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/293136

  • How Juicero’s Story Set the Company Up for Humiliation

    Their moment came this week, after some Juicero investors who received the product noticed something strange. The pouches didn’t require a $400 piece of equipment to yield juice. They required something less proprietary—fingers. Two Bloomberg reporters, Ellen Huet and Olivia Zaleski, performed their own test. They found that squeezing Juicero’s pouches in their hands for 90 seconds yielded as much juice from the bags as the industrial strength machine, which actually took 30 seconds longer to produce a similar amount of liquid. It appeared that Juicero’s vaunted product, which had so beguiled Silicon Valley, was basically a simple press—functionally the equal of a waffle iron, except one that can’t make waffles.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/juicero-lessons/523896/?utm_source=feed

    I am calling this story out because this is what happens when hype goes unchecked.

  • The Best Place to Stand at Networking Events for Better Schmoozing

    Aim for the social zone, usually around the bar, so that you can catch people once they’ve settled in and grabbed a drink to relax. Now people are in networking mode and ready to find someone to meet. As they walk away from the bar, there you are! Once you start chatting, you have a couple techniques to keep the conversation flowing and make a good impression: ask questions rather than just making small talk, focus on the other person’s passions to make things more interesting, or follow the FORD technique. And since networking events are about connecting with more than one person, have an exit line ready so you can gracefully move on after a few minutes.

    http://lifehacker.com/the-best-place-to-stand-at-networking-events-for-better-1794610102

Photo: Frances Gunn

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News You Can Use: 4/19/2017

  • Want to be Successful? Learn to Like Other People

    One of the biggest opportunities for growth at work comes from the way you solicit feedback and what you do with it afterward. Research demonstrates that while employees who speak up tend to improve how well teams function, many tend to be afraid to do so, worrying that their input won’t be well-received. Simply assuming the best in others can lay the foundation for managers and their team members alike to learn and improve without wounding egos.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40401630/want-to-be-happier-and-more-successful-learn-to-like-other-people

  • Why So Many Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Cities

    America’s largest cities have so much going for them. They are rich, productive, and pulsating with culture and life. So what happened to the great urban revival? “America’s cities have domestic net out-migration because they’re not affordable,” said E. J. McMahon, the founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy. “For many, New York City is a temporary portal. The Baby Boomers retire to Florida. The middle-class Millennials move to Long Island for a house. The woman from Slovakia comes to Queens, lives in her second-cousin’s basement, gets her feet on the ground, and gets a better apartment in West Orange, New Jersey.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/why-is-everyone-leaving-the-city/521844/?utm_source=feed

  • With robots on the job, it won’t be IT as usual

    “It’s very much a different mindset than traditional IT,” said Mike Gennert, a professor and director of the Robotics Engineering Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, Mass. “IT managers worry about how they manage information, how it’s used, how it’s stored and secured. But none of that has the ability to directly affect the physical world. Robots affect the real world. That brings issues IT managers have not had to confront.”

    For instance, It’s bad enough if a company computer is hacked and it becomes part of a zombie botnet. But what if someone hijacks a company robot and makes it do things, harmful things, in the real world?

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3188889/robotics/with-robots-on-the-job-its-not-going-to-be-it-as-usual.html

  • Does Silicon Valley Have a Contract-Worker Problem?

    But increasingly, critics argue that the freelance model is being abused, with workers being treated as if they were on payroll without getting any of the benefits afforded to payrolled employees. Some Silicon Valley insiders are beginning to worry that start-ups’ overreliance on contract workers could come back to haunt them if they run afoul of longstanding labor rules. If that happens, these high-flying disruptors could be facing serious disruption themselves.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-valleys-contract-worker-problem.html
    Also:

    Then, there is the problem of massive labor oversupply. Unlike for Uber or TaskRabbit, which operate in a given city with a constrained supply of workers, the pool of labor for such digital work is for all intents and purposes infinite. One contingent-work platform reported having nine times as many workers as necessary. A Filipino virtual assistant described the inevitable result: “I first set [my hourly rate] at $8, because that’s what my previous client was paying me,” the assistant told the researchers. “But I found it quite difficult to find jobs. So I set it at $4. And I think I even set it at $3.50 currently. So, I mean, if you don’t get a lot of invitations, you don’t have any other choice but to lower down your expectations, I guess.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/gig-economy-global/522954/?utm_source=feed

  • What “Personal Space” Means to the Rest of World

    Countries that greatly value their personal space include Romania, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uganda. Participants from all five of those places would prefer it if you stood more than 120 cm away, or roughly four feet. But participants from Argentina, Peru, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Austria don’t mind if you chill about 90 cm away, or less than three feet. The U.S. isn’t too far off from that, expecting strangers to keep a cool 95 cm distance between them.

    That said, nobody likes any stranger standing two and half feet or less away. So stop it. Unless you’re on a cramped metro train or something and can’t help it. It’s also important to note that women and elderly participants of all cultures required more space.

    http://lifehacker.com/what-personal-space-means-to-the-rest-of-world-1794130182
    Certainly not the first time a reporter has addressed this topic, but always good to have a refresher.

Photo: Nina Strehl

Posted on

News You Can Use: 3/15/2017

  • New FCC chairman: Net neutrality rules were a ‘mistake’

    During his speech at Mobile World Congress, Pai said a “new generation” of leadership at the FCC is focused on “renewal as well as change.” The agency will return to the light-touch regulatory approach of the past three decades, he said.

    Pai touted his decision to end an investigation into so-called zero-rating plans, in which some mobile providers exempted some services from their data caps. Promoters of the free data plans have called them pro-consumer, but some net neutrality advocates suggested that plans may violate the rules against selectively promoting some web content.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3175766/internet/new-fcc-chairman-net-neutrality-rules-were-a-mistake.html

  • Building a Hard-Working Team Starts With You

    Once you have the right people, surround them with hard-working peers. Create a culture of “all for one, and one for all” prepared to do whatever is necessary to help the company win the race. Create realistic targets for them to hit by certain dates, and create a competitive spirit within the company, where people can show off their skills.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288954

  • The Making of a Podcast Network | Scott Aukerman
  • ‘Ugh, I’m So Busy’: A Status Symbol for Our Time (a follow up to last week’s post)

    The gleam of being both well-off and time-poor, the authors write, is “driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.” In a curious reversal, the aspirational objects here are not some luxury goods—a nice watch or car, which are now mass-produced and more widely available than they used to be—but workers themselves, who by bragging about how busy they are can signal just how much the labor market values them and their skills.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/busyness-status-symbol/518178/?utm_source=feed

  • Toxic Workplaces Will Persist As Long As Fairness Is Just A Matter Of ‘Compliance’

    But HR, on its own, is poorly situated to fix a business culture that is indifferent to (or in denial about) offering meaningful opportunities for advancement to women or other minorities in the workplace. As political scientist Frank Dobbin has argued, human resources professionals have long struggled to establish their legitimacy within organizations.They are rarely the locus of power within corporations, which instead resides in revenue-generating departments like engineering and sales, and in the executives that preside over the business.

    HR advises. Business decides.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3068482/pov/toxic-workplaces-will-persist-as-long-as-fairness-is-just-a-matter-of-compliance?partner=rss

Photo: Justin Tietsworth

Posted on

News You Can Use: 2/15/2017

  • It’s Time to Go Beyond Supplier Management, But Where is That?

    Organizations these days need more than traditional historically focussed spend analytics that tell them, weeks or months after, what was spent, on what, from whom, by whom, from where, to where, and in what quantity. You need to know what is being spent, by whom, on what in real time … and where the dollars are trending towards. Is a new supplier taking all of the spot buy spend, or even worse, spend that is supposed to be on another contract? Are product and services tastes changing? Are market costs changing? The application has to not only be able to keep up, but identify the most pertinent trends and options for dealing with them … it has to have advanced predictive analytics that, at the very least, identifies the most relevant changes (and ranks them by value or statistics or outlier distance from the expected norm), if not offering prescriptive analytics on how to take advantage of changes, minimize losses, or control them in (historically) well understood situations.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2017/02/03/its-time-to-go-beyond-supplier-management-but-where-is-that/

  • IT and Functional Departments – Finding the Middle Ground

    Procurement also brings market information (suppliers, price points, service levels) that IT may not be as focused on, but that could be critical to the overall solution. IT groups can at times limit themselves to certain suppliers for system or software solutions, but there may be alternate suppliers that easily integrate, or provide enough value to justify the effort required for working with disparate suppliers or systems. Procurement can bring that perspective forward and champion the needs of the business to balance the costs associated with IT change.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2017/01/23/it-and-functional-departments-finding-the-middle-ground/

  • How Levi’s is radically redefining sustainability

    Levi’s has always been a leader in sustainability. In 1991, it established “terms of engagement” that laid out the brand’s global code of conduct throughout its supply chain. This meant setting standards for worker’s rights, a healthy work environment, and an ethical engagement with the planet. “It wasn’t an easy thing to do,” Dillinger says. “At the time, we were worried that doing this would drive up our own costs and prices.” In fact, what happened was that these practices were quickly adopted by other companies, who used it as a template to write their own rules. “We were actually leading industry toward new standards,” he says.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/3067895/moving-the-needle/levis-is-radically-redefining-sustainability

  • Don’t Be the Kobe Bryant of Your Office

    It doesn’t matter how productive you are if no one enjoys working with you. Steve Nash, a former NBA player that the researchers found to be particularly valuable at making his teams better, was famous for constantly high-fiving his teammates. There’s never been a direct measure of a “high-five to productivity ratio,” but doling out praise and encouragement seems to be indicative of creating a high-quality team culture, which in turn increases performance.

    http://www.thesimpledollar.com/dont-be-the-kobe-bryant-of-your-office/

Photo: Oliver Cole