Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew will assert on Thursday that the Obama administration’s vast overhaul of the financial system is close to accomplishing its goal of shielding society from the dangers posed by giant banks. (The New York Times)
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Everybody's heard the complaints about recruiting lately. Even with unemployment hovering around 9%, companies are grousing that they can't find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting. Employers are quick to lay blame. Schools aren't giving kids the right kind of training. The government isn't letting in enough high-skill immigrants. The list goes on and on. (The Wall Street Journal)
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You have a meeting or an important discussion coming up. What is your real objective? If it has anything to do with selling, how can you maximize the likelihood of success? And just to be clear, your objective almost certainly does have something to do with selling. As Daniel Pink argues in his latest book, To Sell is Human, we’re constantly trying to influence behavior – a.k.a. selling. (Harvard Business Review)
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The first spending decline on a Black Friday weekend since 2009 reinforced projections for a lackluster holiday, increasing chances retailers will extend the deep discounts already hurting their profit margins. (Bloomberg)
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It's a potential career nightmare: You switch jobs, only to realize days or weeks later that it was all a huge mistake. While it may seem inconceivable, it is possible to make the dreaded employment U-turn. Bouncing back to a former employer after quitting isn't the résumé killer it once was. People who have done it say it is often worth the humiliation of having to admit a mistake and beg former colleagues to take you back. Returning employees usually end up appreciating their jobs more. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Ambition is all about pushing yourself beyond your perceived limits. If you’re not taking on reach goals and slightly terrifying challenges than you’re unlikely to reach your full potential. Which all sounds good in theory, but there’s a little discussed byproduct of this can-do attitude. Sometimes you’re going to get in over your head – way over. (Inc.)
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The bigger a project seems, the less likely you are to do it because it seems like too much effort. So if you really want to form better habits start really, really small – one pushup at a time. (Fast Company)
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George Osborne has said the UK is growing faster than any other major economy thanks to his policies, but the job of recovery was "not yet done". Delivering his Autumn Statement, the chancellor said Britain was set to be back in the black by 2018/19. But money was still tight and millions would have to wait longer before they got a state pension. (BBC News)
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Having trouble wrapping your head around southern Europe's staggering unemployment problem? Look no further than a single Ikea furniture store on Spain's Mediterranean coast. The plans to open a new megastore next summer near Valencia. On Monday, Ikea's started taking applications for 400 jobs at the new store. The company wasn't prepared for what came next. Within 48 hours, more than 20,000 people had applied online for those 400 jobs. The volume crashed Ikea's computer servers in Spain. (NPR)
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So, you want to start a company. Which business school is best? Steve Kaplan, an entrepreneurship and finance professor at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, says that's the place to be. As proof, he cites recent student ventures, such as food-delivery service GrubHub, which merged with Seamless earlier this year, and Braintree Payment Solutions LLC, acquired by eBay Inc. for $800 million in September. (The Wall Street Journal)
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At a time when many business schools are reporting declining enrollment in their full-time MBA programs, Welch's Management Institute is doing a brisk business. A look at Welch's approach to B-school. (Fortune)
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Anyone who is under the age of 40 probably grew up with a different 3 Rs: REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE. REDUCE first, if you can, then REUSE anything and everything useful, and finally RECYCLE to get the underlying value out of something that you would otherwise throw away. You already know that REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE is right for the planet, but what you may not know is that it is great for your GMAT score as well. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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National Black MBA Association – Austin Chapter, Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT) students Griffin Baker and Hannah Holt had the honor of attending the LOT Boot Camp held in conjunction with the 2013 National Conference in Houston. Griffin and Hannah share a synopsis of lessons learned and their LOT Boot Camp experience. (NBMBAA Austin Chapter)
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A well-known Florida A&M alumna is scheduled to speak during the fall 2013 commencement ceremony Dec. 13. Sonia Jackson Myles, a corporate executive and author of the NAACP Image Award-nominated book, "The Sister Accord: 51 Ways To Love Your Sister," will be the keynote speaker for the ceremony. (The FAMUAN)
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Americans are more likely to use their smartphones for browsing and their iPads or Android GOOG tablets to actually make purchases, research finds. Tablets are where the mobile money is. They drove nearly 12% of all online sales over Cyber Monday, more than double that of smartphones, which accounted for just 5.5%, according to analysis by IBM’s "Digital Analytics Benchmark," a real-time analysis of millions of online transactions from 800 retailers. (MarketWatch)
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Though Mr. Bezos has no idea when drone delivery will become operational – the plan is blocked by U.S. regulation and is both technologically and economically questionable – his unveiling of the project on "60 Minutes" Sunday carried three important public-relations payloads for the firm. (The Wall Street Journal)
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One of the pieces of advice I give new clients always surprises them. "Look at your failures and non-starters," I say in the beginning of any meeting, "and let's find some great ideas." This scares some of them since most people want to move on from failures or what they perceive to be false starts. But the big surprise is that the best innovations aren't based on the unknown or yet to be discovered. (Entrepreneur)
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Lately, it seems like a golden age for startups. Apple bought Topsy, a social search engine. SnapChat turned down a multi-billion dollar deal. And Spotify is seeing explosive growth. Here in Chicago, GrubHub and Trunk Club are just two more of examples of startups with lots of potential. The leaders of those companies are likely wondering how to maintain their entrepreneurial spirit as the organization grows – something many startup founders face when they want to take their businesses to the next level. (Inc.)
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While LinkedIn is often used by job-seekers or employers looking to fill open spots, hiring isn’t LinkedIn’s only function. The social network, which reports more than 259 million members in more than 200 countries, also provides a great opportunity to connect with customers and identify new leads, says DJ Muller, president of WebLink International. (Entrepreneur)
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As fast-food workers plan yet another round of one-day strikes on Thursday in cities around the country, labor leaders, economists and industry officials continue to debate the potential effects of raising wages at companies that often assert that such increases would raise consumer prices and shrink the work force. (The New York Times)
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In August, Science published a landmark study concluding that poverty, itself, hurts our ability to make decisions about school, finances, and life, imposing a mental burden similar to losing 13 IQ points. It was widely seen as a counter-argument to claims that poor people are "to blame" for bad decisions and a rebuke to policies that withhold money from the poorest families unless they behave in a certain way. (The Atlantic)
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As millions of bargain hunters nurse their bruises after Black Friday and sore thumbs after Cyber Monday, many might be wondering why they came home with more stuff than they intended to. The reason: Shoppers are bombarded by tricks worthy of a magician. (MarketWatch)
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The end of the year is prime time for charitable giving. How can you make your donation go further? Whether it is the spirit of the holidays or a personal squaring of accounts ahead of tax season that drives donations, nearly a quarter of household charitable giving happens between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, according to a study by Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy. (MarketWatch)
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A payday loan is a costly form of credit operating on the fringes of the economy. That's why the target of a new crackdown by federal regulators may surprise you: Instead of a forlorn-looking storefront with a garish neon sign, it's your familiar neighborhood bank. A small but growing number of banks, including some major players, have been offering the equivalent of payday loans, calling them "deposit advances." (NPR)
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When Motorola Mobility lined up a Silicon Valley candidate a few months ago for a VP-level role, the phone maker was hopeful he'd accept. After all, the company offered the chance to develop products at a subsidiary of Google Inc. The engineer declined. His reason: the prospect of relocating to Libertyville, Ill., about 35 miles from downtown Chicago, said Scott Sullivan, Motorola's head of human resources. (The Wall Street Journal)
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President Barack Obama, setting a theme that he’ll pursue in the final years of his presidency, said growing income disparity in the U.S. is the "defining challenge or our time" and Washington must confront it. Upward mobility for middle-income Americans has been stymied by economic changes and government policy, Obama said. (Bloomberg)
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I had a CEO in one of my leadership coaching seminars recently who seemed to be quite bitter about life. Whatever suggestion I would make, he would put a negative spin on it. Curious about his remarkable negativity, I asked him to tell more about himself. After a little bit of prompting, he was ready to talk about his life, a narrative that wasn’t very pleasant to listen to. Clearly, I was dealing with a person who carried grudges, hanging on to grievances that should have been forgiven long ago. (Harvard Business Review)
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For too long, the ruling ideology of too many organizations has been control – controlling people, controlling information, controlling deviations from the norm. Of course, that kind of high fear, low trust culture is exactly the wrong design for unleashing and mobilizing the full potential – the full imagination, initiative, passion – of every single person, every single day. (Fortune)
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This holiday season, give the gift of greater spending power with something more fun and thoughtful than a stocking full of cash. Consider our annual list of personal gifts that will save the recipients money in the long run – either by eliminating some of their recurring expenses or boosting their earning power. Your friends and family will be sure to remember your sentiment all year long as the savings keep rolling in. (Kiplinger)
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Good things come to those who wait, but sometimes, bad things come too. When it comes to future bad things – taxes, confrontations, pelvic exams – you can either put them off or get them over with. And studies have shown that people prefer to get it over with. (The Atlantic)
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