Work at home Archives

What unscrupulous attorneys do to win and how to fight back

Selectively reading

This goes to contracts. Taking contract clauses out of context, reading them without punctuation, inserting lines that aren’t in the agreement, and making clauses up are all tactics I’ve seen used in negotiations. Make sure you read along with the attorney and before entering a negotiation you know every major clause nearly by heart. You need to have a good grasp of the case as well so you understand the core elements of the case otherwise you can get maneuvered into agreeing to items that seem minor, but turn out to be pivotal to your effort.

http://www.cio.com/article/3016783/legal/what-unscrupulous-attorneys-do-to-win-and-how-to-fight-back.html#tk.rss_all
Brevity Is the Secret to Pitches That Nail It Every Time

We start our pitches with a 30-second introduction that covers who we are and just a couple bullet points why we’re credible. Beyond that, the focus is on delivering a tight, concise presentation about our product. Investors’ eyes glaze over when teams talk too much about themselves. Get to the point quickly.

Use clean, well-designed slides, and always be prepared with more in-depth financial projections and analytics in case they ask.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/253879
There’s More Value in Your Attitude Than Your Bank Account

If you wake up every day intent on being happy and exuding happiness, success will follow. Strahan’s latest book is “Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life”
MBA grad uses SCM knowledge to combat HIV in Cameroon

Muffih said his day-to-day duties in the capital city of Cameroon, Yaounde, include improving stock management systems, coordinating with other partners, and capacitating health workers to develop accurate forecasting and efficient supply chain systems for HIV commodities. He said he is still learning a lot on the job, but his experiences at SAU have helped him cope with the demands and responsibilities of his career.

https://web.saumag.edu/news/2015/12/16/mba-grad-uses-scm-knowledge-to-combat-hiv-in-cameroon/
Should You Work From Home?

The main question to ask yourself is why you want or need office space. How will you weight the pros versus the cons? Which things are more important to you? If there are cons that are important to you, are there ways to mitigate the negatives? For example, if working at home would make you feel isolated, could you deal with this by attending networking events and working at a local coffee shop at least some of the time?

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/253932
Societal Damnation 50: Talent Tightness

It’s not all about money, and that goes double for top talent, but that being said, money is a factor, and if your competition is offering 20%, 30%, and even 40% more, that’s a little hard to turn down. Especially if they are also offering flexible hours, training, course reimbursement for any course taken on the employee’s own time where the employee gets a minimum / passing grade, etc. So if your training budget is still 0, your corporate policy still mandates being in the office from 9 to 5 (even though your suppliers are in a time zone 9 hours shifted and this means everyone would be working 11 hours any day a supplier has to be consulted), and there are pay ceilings in effect from 5 years ago, the chances of getting anyone talented to join your Procurement department are slim to none, with an emphasis on none.

http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2015/12/15/societal-damnation-50-talent-tightness/
Top 5 reasons agile is a good idea

Perfection is not required to stay on track. As just mentioned, if something is overlooked, it isn’t the end of the world. I ran a $1.2 million software implementation project for a large government entity while at a professional services organization. The dev manager overlooked something very critical which resulted in a large amount of rework which used up all of the budget when we were only 60% through the engagement. It ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the entire engagement. What a waste. This is an extreme example and agile would not have saved that project, but in the agile world, if something is omitted from a sprint, it can go in the next functional rollout. No high costs, no big rework.

http://www.cio.com/article/3014972/project-management/top-5-reasons-agile-is-a-good-idea.html#tk.rss_all

Photo: Louis Magnotti

Generation Y: A New Challenge For Travel Procurement

When it comes to business travel, these digitally-savvy employees expect a sleek, consumer-like experience from corporate booking tools: when they don’t get it they turn to the consumer applications they already have to hand, and book outside the corporate environment. Not only can this lead to irresponsible spending, and weaker negotiated rates in the future, but it poses significant risks to a company’s “duty of care” responsibility towards its employees. If you don’t know where they are, you can’t help them in an emergency. So how can procurement help to bring Generation Y back into the fold?

http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/generation-y-a-new-challenge-for-travel-procurement-542624
IBM and Procurement Transformation: By the Numbers, Risk Management and More
[While this is interesting, I really want to know more about the AI/Watson solutions that IBM just started talking about]

From a numbers perspective, IBM’s procurement performance KPIs and performance improvement metrics are more than impressive. Michael noted IBM saved $6.9B in approved and measured savings targets in 2014 compared to before the program was put into place. Payment terms now stand at close to 60 days rather than 30 days. Spend and contract compliance has increased from 50% to over 90%. Sourcing experts now look at 100% of spend compared to less than 10%. Electronic invoicing has increased from 20% to 90%. And 83% of POs never touch a buyer.

http://spendmatters.com/2015/06/04/ibm-and-procurement-transformation-by-the-numbers-risk-management-and-more/
The Basics of making small talk:
This Calculator Will Tell You If A Robot Is Coming For Your Job

For now, those with the highest-skill, highest-paid jobs are probably safe, and low-skill workers are not. “Inequality is probably the foremost challenge,” says Osborne. “It’s not going to be a problem of there not being enough wealth. We’re fairly confident that all of these technologies will continue to generate vast amounts of wealth—we’ll be generating a cornucopia of increasingly cheap and wonderful goods that will be able to be produced for next to zero marginal cost. But those benefits we’ll see as consumers might not necessarily be realized by workers.”

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047269/this-calculator-will-tell-you-if-a-robot-is-coming-for-your-job?partner=rss
3 Reasons ‘Casual Flex’ at Work Doesn’t Work

What’s more, one-third of workers worldwide feel stressed about work-life issues, according to a study by Ernst & Young about work-life challenges. And flexible-work policies that are merely informal may cause other systemic problems: A Boston University study found employees at a Boston consulting firm faking their 80-hour work weeks over fears that asking to use flexible-work options would cause negative reactions from management. These fears were well founded, it turns out. Employees who faked 80-hour workweeks were given excellent performance reviews, while those who openly asked for flexibility were negatively reviewed, even though they worked the same number of hours as their faking colleagues. That sort of scenario undermines trust and confidence in working relationships, to say the least.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246802?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly

Tag: Work at home

News You Can Use: 12/23/2015

News You Can Use: 6/15/2015