   
CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time! The Ultimate Rich Kids Were the Children of Famous Explorers
 In 1523, Diego Colon, the eldest son of the man known as Cristobal Colon - whom the United States calls Christopher Columbus - crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the last time, called back by the Spanish crown to answer for his actions in "New Spain." Since his father had died, in 1506, Diego had been fighting to claim the wealth and power he believed he was owed, that Spain had promised his family.
He had managed to win the support of Charles V, the most recent king, but after Diego raised taxes in Hispaniola and invested in slavery and sugar plantations, the new king had started to see him as a rebel. For decades, the monarchy and the Colon family had been caught in a legal battle, a battle that would stretch on for centuries, over the wealth ripped from the "New World" - the labor of the people in colonized lands, the natural resources, and a share of the tax revenue sent back to Spain. Diego wanted more of it than, in practice, the monarchy was willing to hand over.
Continued here
|
The commas that cost companies millions
 For most people, a stray comma isn’t the end of the world. But in some cases, the exact placement of a punctuation mark can cost huge sums of money.
How much can a misplaced comma cost you?
If you\'re texting a loved one or dashing off an email to a colleague, the cost of misplacing a piece of punctuation will be â€" at worst â€" a red face and a minor mix-up.
But for some, contentious commas can be a path to the poor house.
A dairy company in the US city of Portland, Maine settled a court case for $5m earlier this year because of a missing comma.
Three lorry drivers for Oakhurst Dairy claimed that they were owed years of unpaid overtime wages, all because of the way commas were used in legislation governing overtime payments.
The state\'s laws declared that overtime wasn\'t due for workers involved in "the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: 1) agricultural produce; 2) meat and fish products; and 3) perishable foods".
Continued here
|
The Nine Habits to Increase Your Energy
 Energy, not time, is the basis for productivity. Having all the hours in the day won\'t help you if you\'re exhausted for most of it.
Your habits define your energy levels. If you have good habits, you\'ll feel energized and be more resilient to burn out, both physically and mentally. If your habits are misaligned, you can get into a cycle where you feel worse and worse, until your it\'s a struggle just to keep up.
Here are nine habits you can work on this year to increase your energy levels.
Continued here
|
There's a dark side to meditation that no one talks about
 We\'ve all heard about the benefits of meditation ad nauseam. Those disciplined enough to practice regularly are rewarded with increased control over the brainwaves known as alpha rhythms, which leads to better focus and may help ease pain. In addition to calming the mind and body, meditation can also reduce the markers of stress in people with anxiety disorders. Rigorous studies have backed health claims such as these to convince therapists, physicians, and corporate gurus to embrace meditation\'s potential.
What contemporary and ancient meditators have always known, however, is that while the hype may be warranted, the practice is not all peace, love, and blissful glimpses of unreality. Sitting zazen, gazing at their third eye, a person can encounter extremely unpleasant emotions and physical or mental disturbances.
Continued here
|
The Top 20 Business Transformations of the Last Decade
 In 2012, Denmark\'s biggest energy company, Danish Oil and Natural Gas, slid into financial crisis as the price of natural gas was plunging by 90% and S&P downgraded its credit rating to negative. The board hired a former executive at LEGO, Henrik Poulsen, as the new CEO. Whereas some leaders might have gone into crisis-management mode, laying off workers until prices recovered, Poulsen recognized the moment as an opportunity for fundamental change.
"We saw the need to build an entirely new company," says Poulsen. He renamed the firm Orsted after the legendary Danish scientist Hans Christian Orsted, who discovered the principles of electromagnetism. "It had to be a radical transformation; we needed to build a new core business and find new areas of sustainable growth. We looked at the shift to combat climate change, and we became one of the few companies to wholeheartedly make this profound decision, to be one of the first to go from black to green energy."
That strategic impulse - to identify a higher-purpose mission that galvanizes the organization - is a common thread among the Transformation 20, a new study by Innosight of the world\'s most transformative companies.
Continued here
|
How Leaders Can Cultivate Patience in an Impatient World
 The whole world is waiting for a coronavirus vaccine so that life can get back to normal. It feels like all of us are characters in Waiting for Godot. But unlike Samuel Beckett\'s play, where the protagonists are waiting for something that probably will never happen, we can expect that a cure will be found. Until that time, much patience will be needed.
The pandemic has made us realise that patience is one of the more difficult challenges of being human. In more ways than one, the coronavirus has dramatically transformed our lives - and not necessarily for the better. For many of us, "cabin fever" has raised its ugly head, contributing to various mental health problems. Some of us may even have been quite sick, had a brush with death or had someone close to us die. It has been difficult to remain calm, cool and collected.
In our world of overnight delivery, fast food and overall instant gratification, many of us don\'t even give ourselves the time to read a novel. Instead, we prefer to read short articles or watch YouTube clips. When our needs aren\'t met immediately, we become frustrated.
Stress elevates our cortisol levels and triggers our flight or fight response. Impatience can transform leaders into agitated, poor decision makers. It can harm our reputation, damage our relationships and escalate already difficult situations. In sum, impatience is a root cause of much unhappiness in the world today.
Continued here
|
5 habits of people who are especially productive working from home
 Before many office workers transitioned to remote arrangements, the thought of working from home sounded like a dream. Who doesn\'t love the idea of ditching the commute and staying in your sweats? But those of us who have been working from home for years know the reality, and it isn\'t always as stress-free as it sounds.
Loneliness, isolation, distractions, and Zoom fatigue are real, and they are challenges to overcome, says Juliet Funt, CEO of Whitespace at Work, team efficiency consultants and training providers.
"One of the most critical challenges is the sense that work never ends," she says. "Folks wake up, grab the laptop from the bedside table, and begin a 10-, 12-, 14-hour alternating cycle, flipping from laptop to kids to laptop to food to laptop, until they pass out over the screen and start the pattern again."
Continued here
|
The Mystery of Human Uniqueness
 What, exactly, makes our biology special?
If you dropped a dozen human toddlers on a beautiful Polynesian island with shelter and enough to eat, but no computers, no cell phones, and no metal tools, would they grow up to be like humans we recognize or like other primates? Would they invent language? Without the magic sauce of culture and technology, would humans be that different from chimpanzees?
Nobody knows. (Ethics bars the toddler test.) Since the early 1970s, scientists across the biological sciences keep stumbling on the same hint over and over again: we\'re different but not nearly as different as we thought. Neuroscientists, geneticists, and anthropologists have all given the question of human uniqueness a go, seeking special brain regions, unique genes, and human-specific behaviors, and, instead, finding more evidence for common threads across species.
Continued here
|
How Giving Up TV For A Month Changed My Brain And My Life
 I\'ve never seen Game of Thrones, I don\'t know what the Scandal is, and I couldn\'t name a single "real" housewife. I thought I didn\'t watch much television and that taking a 30-day break would be a piece of cake. I was wrong.
The average adult watches 2.8 hours per day of television, according to the American Time Use survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another study puts this number higher, at four hours and 15 minutes each day. I added up all of the viewing at my house, and we were definitely on the high side.
- A one-hour standing date with Judge Judy, marking the official end of my workday
- An hour of news
- Thirty minutes of Jeopardy (because it’s educational)
- And an hour-plus of mindless shows before bed
Nielsen, we have a problem.
Continued here
|
The 9 Types of People You'll Meet in Retirement
 Everyone\'s experience in retirement is unique. But there are some characterizations we can draw from data collected in various surveys and studies of retirees.
Put together they form the nine types of people you\'ll encounter throughout your later years. Some offer attributes you may want to adopt, and others those you are best to avoid.
They all, however, can provide lessons on how to live a fulfilling retirement.
Continued here
|
Motivating Employees Is Not About Carrots or Sticks
 Motivating employees seems like it should be easy. And it is - in theory. But while the concept of motivation may be straightforward, motivating employees in real-life situations is far more challenging. As leaders, we\'re asked to understand what motivates each individual on our team and manage them accordingly. What a challenging ask of leaders, particularly those with large or dispersed teams and those who are already overwhelmed by their own workloads.
Leaders are also encouraged to rely on the carrot versus stick approach for motivation, where the carrot is a reward for compliance and the stick is a consequence for noncompliance. But when our sole task as leaders becomes compliance, trying to compel others to do something, chances are we\'re the only ones who will be motivated.
Continued here
|
Elizabeth Holmes and other famous grifters expose the myth of quick and easy success
 The motto "fake it till you make it" is taking a serious blow of late. As tales of con artists proliferate, the advice to feign greatness just doesn\'t seem sustainable. Grifters in business, the arts, literature, real estate, and wellness are being exposed at alarming rates; they\'re paying fines and facing prison time or already in custody, which really takes the shine off imitation awesome.
The New Yorker in June declared this the grifter season. "The wind changed, the pressure dropped, and the scent of scamming was suddenly everywhere in the air," writes Jia Tolentino. And it wasn\'t a pleasant smell - not sweet like the smell of rain, but sour, like turned milk.
Continued here
|
The 10/10/10 Rule For Tough Decisions
 It\'s easy to lose perspective when we\'re facing a thorny dilemma. Blinded by the particulars of the situation, we\'ll waffle and agonize, changing our mind from day to day.
Perhaps our worst enemy in resolving these conflicts is short-term emotion, which can be an unreliable adviser. When people share the worst decisions they\'ve made in life, they are often recalling choices made in the grip of visceral emotion: anger, lust, anxiety, greed. Our lives would be very different if we had a dozen "undo" buttons to use in the aftermath of these choices.
But we are not slaves to our emotions. Visceral emotion fades. That\'s why the folk wisdom advises that when we\'ve got an important decision to make, we should sleep on it. It\'s sound advice, and we should take it to heart. For many decisions, though, sleep isn\'t enough. We need strategy.
Continued here
|
If you were fired, don't lie about it in a job interview. Do this instead
 Being fired is awkward. Sometimes you deserve it, and sometimes you don\'t. Either way, it can be a difficult thing to explain at a future job interview. In fact it\'s hard to think of a less tasteful way of selling yourself for gainful employment than admitting that you were forcibly removed from a previous post.
But getting fired doesn\'t make you a bad person, nor does it mean you won\'t be an all-star in a new role, or at a new company. I was once fired from an ice cream scooping job because I bit my fingernails too much and apparently the sight of my chewed-up digits bothered the customers. I can share the experience now and laugh about it; humor, as they say, is just pain plus time.
Continued here
|
The Manufacturer's Dilemma
 To secure itself, the West (and the world) needs to figure out where all its gadgets are coming from. Here\'s why that\'s so difficult.
Tinkering with economic supply chains for intelligence- and other national security-related reasons is not a new idea; indeed, Western countries have long done just that. In the 1980s, the CIA, according to former Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed, inserted sabotaged software into a Soviet oil pipeline, causing it to explode. Five years ago, Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency had inserted backdoor espionage tools into U.S.-made internet routers being exported to Syria. And in February, the New York Times reported that the United States was accelerating a George W. Bush-era practice of inserting faulty parts into Iran’s aerospace supply chains, which appears to have caused some of the country’s test rocket launches to fail. Such disruption and sabotage are unlikely to affect large parts of any product\'s supply chain, but the psychological and consumer damage caused by even a minor mishap can be immense. Just as parents are scared away from baby food by the report of a single piece of glass, so the damage done by sabotage could cause permanent distrust in a given product or manufacturer.
Continued here
|
How I finally learned to sleep
 For decades, Kate Edgley struggled with insomnia. She tried everything, but nothing seemed to work. She reveals the terrible toll it took on her life - and how she eventually realized her dreams.
My brain flickered into consciousness and, a moment later, a tiny lift in my chest made itself known. Glee. A simple but palpable joy on waking. I bounded out of bed, looking forward to the day. Then a sudden jolt had me standing, motionless, gazing across the room in wonder. I’m looking forward to my day! I’m looking forward to my day? Bloody hell! A slow grin squeezed my cheeks as energy zipped around my body and, refusing to be contained, had me gyrating my hips and arms in sync, dancing, naked, around my bedroom, wondering whether I\'d care - or stop - if either of my teenage children walked in. I\'m looking forward to my day! I\'m looking forward to my day! Whaaaaa-hoo!
Continued here
|
Pick Your Audience and Forget Everyone Else
 Marketing guru Seth Godin says as a small business owner you need to identify who the people you serve are, and treat them with empathy. Here\'s a 3 minute video with some quick reminders on how to think about your core customer
Continued here
|
Points of contact: a short history of door handles
 We have all become suddenly more aware of the moments when we cannot avoid touching elements of public buildings. Architecture is the most physical, most imposing and most present of the arts - you cannot avoid it yet, strangely, we touch buildings at only a very few points - the handrail, perhaps a light switch and, almost unavoidably, the door handle. This modest piece of handheld architecture is our critical interface with the structure and the material of the building. Yet it is often reduced to the most generic, cheaply made piece of bent metal which is, in its way, a potent critique of the value we place on architecture and our acceptance of its reduction to a commodified envelope rather than an expression of culture and craft.
Despite their ubiquity and pivotal role in the haptic experience of architecture, door handles remain oddly under-documented. There are no serious histories and only patchy surveys of design, mostly sponsored by manufacturers. Yet in the development of the design of the door handle we have, in microcosm, the history of architecture, a survey of making and a measure of the development of design and how it relates to manufacture, technology and the body.
Continued here
|
Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
 It\'s possible they could be vastly more efficient, but for that to happen we need to better understand the thermodynamics of computing
Microsoft is currently running an interesting set of hardware experiments. The company is taking a souped-up shipping container stuffed full of computer servers and submerging it in the ocean. The most recent round is taking place near Scotland\'s Orkney Islands, and involves a total of 864 standard Microsoft data-center servers. Many people have impugned the rationality of the company that put Seattle on the high-tech map, but seriously - why is Microsoft doing this?
There are several reasons, but one of the most important is that it is far cheaper to keep computer servers cool when they\'re on the seafloor. This cooling is not a trivial expense. Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. goes just to running computers - a huge cost to the economy as whole. Moreover, all that energy used by those computers ultimately gets converted into heat. This results in a second cost: that of keeping the computers from melting.
Continued here
|
A VC Told Him He Had a Billion Dollar Idea. He Stayed Niche Instead
 The founder of a popular app on why he opted for a smaller, happier business.
Most entrepreneurs would be thrilled if a VC told them they had a billion-dollar idea. Not Winston Chen.
A long-time tech executive in Boston, Chen first came to my attention not for his work but for not working at all. I wrote a story back in 2013 about a year-long sabbatical he took with his family on a tiny Norwegian island in the Arctic. In the midst of that long, dark Nordic winter, Chen had built a text-to-speech app called Voice Dream Reader. When we spoke it was a modest success, helping those with visual impairments and learning differences and supporting the Chen family. Today it\'s doing a whole lot better.
The original app, as well as related additional products, have won Chen both hundreds of thousands of loyal users and a prestigious award from the National Federation of the Blind.
Continued here
|
To Solve Big Problems, Look for Small Wins
 It is tempting, during a crisis as severe as the Covid-19 pandemic, for leaders to respond to big problems with bold moves - a radical strategy to reinvent a struggling business, a long-term shift to virtual teams and long-distance collaboration. Indeed, so much of the expert commentary on Covid-19 argues, as did a recent white paper from McKinsey & Company, that we are on the brink of a "next normal" that will "witness a dramatic restructuring of the economic and social order in which business and society have traditionally operated."
I\'d argue that even if we do face a "next normal," the best way for leaders to move forward isn\'t by making sweeping changes but rather by embracing a gradual, improvisational, quietly persistent approach to change that Karl E. Weick, the organizational theorist and distinguished professor at the University of Michigan, famously called "small wins." Weick is an intellectual giant; over the past 50 years, his concepts such as loose coupling, mindfulness, and sensemaking have shaped our understanding of organizational life. But perhaps his most powerful insight into to how we can navigate treacherous times is to remind us that when it comes to leading change, less is usually more.
Continued here
|
These are the 3 components of a great story
 Our brains are hardwired to hear stories, rather than hard facts.
I was recently coaching a C-suite executive from a multi-billion-dollar company. He started telling me about his background and told me he was from Mumbai. Having spent time in Mumbai, I asked: "where in Mumbai?"
"From the slums of Mumbai," he answered, "My mother had me when she was 16. She made me study - in the middle of relentless chaos - she made me study."
His answer immediately stood out to me for two reasons. One, his mother made a huge difference in his life. Two, in just a few sentences, he encapsulated the elements of telling a great story.
Continued here
|
The Philosopher Who Says We Should Play God
 Australian bioethicist Julian Savulescu has a knack for provocation. Take human cloning. He says most of us would readily accept it if it benefited us. As for eugenics - creating smarter, stronger, more beautiful babies - he believes we have an ethical obligation to use advanced technology to select the best possible children.
A protege of the philosopher Peter Singer, Savulescu is a prominent moral philosopher at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He also edits the Journal of Medical Ethics. Savulescu isn’t shy about stepping onto ethical minefields. He sees nothing wrong with doping to help cyclists climb those steep mountains in the Tour de France. Some elite athletes will always cheat to boost their performance, so instead of trying to enforce rules that will be broken, he claims we’d be better off with a system that allows low-dose doping.
Continued here
|
Can You Be a Great Leader Without Technical Expertise?
There is a broad assumption in society and in education that the skills you need to be a leader are more or less transferable. If you can inspire and motivate people in one arena, you should be able to apply those skills to do the same in another venue.
But recent research is rightly challenging this notion. Studies suggest that the best leaders know a lot about the domain in which they are leading, and part of what makes them successful in a management role is technical competence. For example, hospitals managed by doctors perform better than those managed by people with other backgrounds. And there are many examples of people who ran one company effectively and had trouble transferring their skills to the new organization.
Continued here
/ |
The Surprising Science of Walking
 The earliest fossilised footprints of a human being were found at a saltwater lagoon in South Africa. They came from a woman some 117,000 years ago, proof that walking is something that ties us to our deep evolutionary past, that it is an activity as old as our species and unique to us as well.
As Shane O\'Mara points out in In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, his delightful and salient account of the centrality of walking to human life and history, we may not know what her life was like, but surely the sky above and ground underfoot feel much the same today as they did then.
"We humans, rightly and correctly, display a fascination with our origins," writes O\'Mara. There may be no better way to indulge this fascination than to go out for a walk.
Even the quickest and most mundane walk can be rife with scientific, evolutionary and even spiritual significance in O\'Mara\'s opinion.
Continued here
|
Simon Sinek's Advice to Leaders: Check In. And Truly Listen.
 The biggest mistake that leaders make is that they think they need to have all the answers,\' says the popular author and business coach.
Even in tough times, Simon Sinek is an optimist.
"Optimism is not a denial of the current state, it\'s a belief that the future is bright," the business coach and best-selling author of Start With Why (2009), Leaders Eat Last (2014), and The Infinite Game (2019) told Inc.com managing editor Lindsay Blakely in a Real Talk: Business Reboot virtual event Thursday. "I do fundamentally believe we will be better off because of this, not in spite of it."
During the hourlong conversation, Sinek explained how crisis is the "great revealer" and reaching out to employees is essential for leaders, as is listening and not always having all the answers.
Continued here
|
Revisiting agile teams after an abrupt shift to remote
 Agile teams traditionally excel when their members are co-located. Here\'s how to ensure they\'re effective now that COVID-19 has forced them to work remotely.
As organizations adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, their agile teams can be a real source of competitive advantage. Such teams are typically well suited to periods of disruption, given their ability to adapt to fast-changing business priorities, disruptive technology, and digitization.
But the abrupt shift to remote working in response to the coronavirus has challenged the typical approach to managing agile teams. Traditionally, such teams thrive when team members are co-located, with close-knit groups all working in the same place. Co-location allows frequent in-person contact, quickly builds trust, simplifies problem solving, encourages instant communication, and enables fast-paced decision making. And while we know from experience that agile teams that have worked remotely from the start can be as effective, the sudden transition of co-located teams to a fully remote approach can reduce cohesion and increase inefficiency
Continued here
|
 | TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives |
No comments:
Post a Comment