Fast Company Blogs

Fast Company, my all time favorite magazine, now offers a complete set of interesting blogs for your enjoyment!

Check them out!

Topics:

Innovation

Technology

Leadership

Change Management

Careers

Design

Social Responsibility

Work/Life

Merry Christmas From UPS!

An acquaintance of mine has suffered through dealing with UPS during this holiday season.

Read the whole sad story here.

When the history of these times is written... and people wonder how things could have developed the way that they did... perhaps someone will find little clues like this one.

How is it that so many large organizations fail to perform, yet top executives walk away with outrageous yearly pay packages?

For example...

Michael L Eskew
CEO/Chairman of the Board/Director
United Parcel Service

Cash Compensation (FY December 2006)

Salary $988,000
Bonus $41,500 (for what?)
Long Term Comp $5,136,086
---------------------------------------
Sub Total $6,165,586
Plus
Stock Options $2,855,203
---------------------------------------

Grand Total = $9,020,789

Source:
Forbes

Happy New Year from UPS!

On October 15, 2007, United Parcel Service, Inc. announced that Michael L. Eskew will retire as UPS's chief executive officer and chairman of the board effective January 1, 2008.

Great Book About India!

Interested in learning more about emerging India?

Have a look at...

The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone: India the Emerging 21st-Century Power

by Shashi Tharoor

Adchemy Values

I just loved this post from the Founder of Adchemy...

As a Founder or a CEO, your job is to build a company that creates sustained value for its employees, customers and stakeholders. Essential to this is defining and living by a set of core values. Why? Because core values breed competitive advantage and sustained value. How? Core values are the foundation of culture, behavioral norms, and decision making in the company. Strong cultures help recruiting and retention, in both good times and in bad. Shared behavioral norms lead to more efficient execution. A common decision making framework allows the company to decentralize and scale faster.

When I founded Adchemy in November 2004, I knew that a fundamental task would be to create a set of core values with my team that would be central to everything we do: They would govern how we work with each other; how we would deal with conflict; who we would recruit and promote; and how we would make investment decisions.
Adchemy’s six core values are:

1. Play to win… as a team
2. Dare to Simplify
3. Be Long-Term Greedy
4. Decide with Data
5. Learn. Then Teach
6. Never Compromise Integrity

In addition to quantifiable performance objectives, everyone at Adchemy is tasked to embody these values. Today i believe our culture is our most strategic asset. How did we establish this, and how do we keep it alive despite doubling our headcount year over year?

1. UNEARTH YOUR VALUES

Early on, we had everyone in the company spend a few weeks hammering out our values. We didn’t have marketing write them or look up values books to see what Edison or Rockefeller might have written. We all had a keen sense of what was important to us, what kind of company we wanted to build, and what types of people we wanted to work with. We used an consultant to guide our thinking and came up with our values to govern all aspects of Adchemy from building products to selling to customers to running financials. The entire team took ownership since these were their values as much as mine. As a result, what we ended up with rings incredibly true.

Some rules of thumb: Take a stand. Don’t waffle. Don’t try to please or appease. This will mean some people will not fit your culture and your values. This is a good thing.

2. BROADCAST YOUR VALUES

Values are useless if they only sit behind the CEO’s desk or buried in Powerpoint presentations from HR. Make your values visible. Hold people accountable from your board members to your most junior employees. If your summer intern can embody your values, you know you have succeeded.

We market our values just as much as we market our products. They are broadcast on our Web site, across the walls of our offices. We live them day in and day out. I tell the company that if they don’t find me living by a value, they have an obligation to tell me so.

3. HIRE YOUR VALUES

If you don’t make values integral to the hiring process, all is for naught – your values and culture get diluted by the vagaries of hiring.

Most of my time in interviews is spent assessing whether the candidate is a good fit with our values. Of course, you still need to screen for competence. But competence alone necessary but not sufficient.

Once you start explicitly looking for values in your hiring process, a virtuous cycle starts –prospects who share the same values become more interested in the company, and those who don’t share the same values tend to self-select out.

4. REWARD YOUR VALUES

Measure and reward what you want. In annual performance reviews we rate people on “performance against objectives” and “behavior against values”. We weigh both equally. Many people question how we would objectively rate behavior against values. There is always judgment involved, but that’s ok. It is the measuring and the discussion that is important, not whether you got an 8.2 or a 8.7 out of 10. And we celebrate values-performance: we announce “Living our Values” awards at monthly all hands meetings, and at this year’s holiday party, we awarded employees who had exemplified a company value throughout the year. In all cases, recipients are peer nominated.

Now for the hard part. You cannot tolerate behavior that violates core values, regardless of the performance of the individual or their seniority. As difficult as this might be, you need to take steps to ensure that individual changes their behavior or is asked to leave.

Murthy Nukala is currently the founder and CEO of Adchemy, a web marketing company. Previously he was founder and CEO of Digital Jones, a startup focused on guided selling solutions. Digital Jones was acquired by Shopping.com, where Murthy served as senior vice president for enterprise products before launching Adchemy.

2007 - Year in Review

101 Dumbest Moments in Business

Ah, what a dumb year it was! Fortune chose the absolutely dumbest of the dumb that the gods of fate and humor delivered into our laps - and yours - this past year.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

“Bloom’s Taxonomy” was released in 1956 by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. Bloom’s Taxonomy categorizes cognitive and learning functions into six general categories shown in the left side of the table below.

Knowledge	arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state
Comprehension	classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate, recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate
Application	apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write
Analysis	analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test
Synthesis	arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write
Evaluation	appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge, predict, rate, select, support, value, evaluate

Bloom’s six categories range from the simple recall or recognition of facts as the lowest level, through increasingly complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order of cognitive activity which he classified as evaluation. Verb examples that represent intellectual activity on each level are listed on the right side of the table, above. Consider what you will want your students to be able to do upon completion of the course.

In theory, the more exam questions, the better the evaluation of a student’s progress. In practice the student taking the exam is constrained by the time allotted. Exams should not require more than one hour on average to complete. Some types of questions are more quickly answered than others. Exams need to have the greatest number of questions that can be answered in the time allowed, while demanding the requisite level of thinking on the part of the student. The chart below can help you select question types based on the time normally required to answer them.

Question Type	Average Time Needed to Answer
True-False Questions	15 to 30 seconds per question
Multiple choice (brief questions)	30 to 60 seconds
More complex multiple choice questions	60 to 90 seconds
Multiple choice questions with calculations	2 to 5 minutes
Short answer (one word)	30 to 60 seconds
Short answer (longer than one word)	1 to 4 minutes
Matching (5 premises, 6 responses)	2 to 4 minutes
Short essay	15 to 20 minutes
Data analysis/graphing	15 to 25 minutes
Drawing models/labeling	20 to 30 minutes
Extended essays	35 to 50 minutes

Make sure you allow enough time for slower students to finish the examination.

Competing in a Flat World?

You might want to read this book!

Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World (Hardcover)

by Victor K. Fung (Author), William K. Fung (Author), Yoram (Jerry) Wind (Author)

New Yorker

I'm originally from New York City... I love this classic magazine cover from the New Yorker... what can I say?

China Makes, The World Takes

Interesting magazine article by James Fallow about manufacturing in China!

Highlights...

“Happy with crappy...”

The Chinese factories can respond more quickly, and not simply because of 12-hour workdays. “Anyplace else, you’d have to import different raw materials and components,” Casey told me. “Here, you’ve got nine different suppliers within a mile, and they can bring a sample over that afternoon. People think China is cheap, but really, it’s fast.” Moreover, the Chinese factories use more human labor, and fewer expensive robots or assembly machines, than their counterparts in rich countries. “People are the most adaptable machines,” an American industrial designer who works in China told me. “Machines need to be reprogrammed. You can have people doing something entirely different next week.”

At the moment, most jobs I’ve seen the young women in the factories perform have not been “taken” from America, because in America these assembly-type tasks would be done by machines.

But the Chinese goal is, of course, to build toward something more lucrative. Many people I have spoken with say that the climb will be slow for Chinese industries, because they have so far to go in bringing their design, management, and branding efforts up to world standards. “Think about it—global companies are full of CEOs and executives from India, but very few Chinese,” Dominic Barton, the chairman of Mc­Kinsey’s Asia Pacific practice, told me. The main reason, he said, is China’s limited pool of executives with adequate foreign-language skills and experience working abroad. Andy Switky, the managing director–Asia Pacific for the famed California design firm IDEO, described a frequent Chinese outlook toward quality control as “happy with crappy.” This makes it hard for them to move beyond the local, low-value market. “Even now in China, most people don’t have an iPod or a notebook computer,” the manager of a Taiwanese-owned audio-device factory told me. “So it’s harder for them to think up improvements, or even tell a good one from a bad one.” These and other factors may slow China’s progress. But that’s a feeble basis for American hopes.

Want A Prestigious Job?

The 2007 "Most Prestigious Occupations" poll measured the public perceptions of 23 professions.

Participants were asked to rank these professions as having "very great prestige," "considerable prestige," "some prestige," or "hardly any prestige at all." They could also opt not to rank them or say they weren't sure.

Sixty-one percent of adults consider firefighters to have "very great prestige," making this occupation the most prestigious on the list.

Five other occupations were ranked as having "very great prestige" by over 50 percent of the adults surveyed: Scientists and teachers are considered very prestigious by 54 percent of adults, followed by doctors and military officers, who earn the prestige of 52 percent of Americans, and nurses, whom half of all adults consider very prestigious.

Among the least prestigious occupations are real estate brokers, actors and bankers. Only 5 percent of survey participants ranked real estate brokers as very prestigious; 9 percent gave actors this label, followed by 10 percent for bankers.

Accountants, entertainers, stockbrokers, union leaders, journalists, business executives and athletes all also ranked low on the list: Less than 20 percent of adults consider any of the aforementioned occupations to have "very great prestige."

Consequently, five occupations are perceived to have "hardly any prestige at all" by at least a quarter of adults: stockbrokers (25 percent), union leaders (30 percent), entertainers (31 percent), real estate brokers (34 percent) and actors (38 percent).

Chinese Graduates Look for Jobs...

This is a photo from a recent job fair for college graduates in China...

China has been under great pressure as the number of college graduates keeps surging. According to statistics, 5.59 million students will graduate from higher education institutions in 2008,an increase of 640,000 over this year. About 30 percent or 1.4 million college graduates failed to find a job on graduation in 2007.

FREE Knowledge Management Tools

A great new 94 page FREE guide is available online which offers an exciting array of knowledge management tools.

You just CAN'T pass this up!

Highly recommended!!!!!

Teambuilding

A great article from Yahoo News about team building!

Some key ideas...

If you have a bunch of jerks, your brand is going to be a jerk," said Tim Sanders, former leadership coach at Yahoo Inc. and author of "The Likeability Factor."

Kris Thompson, vice president of human resources at Lindblad, said, "You can teach people any technical skill, but you can't teach them how to be a kindhearted, generous-minded person with an open spirit."

At KaBoom, a nonprofit that builds playgrounds, CEO Darell Hammond started thinking about who left and why, then focused on the characteristics of workers who stayed. The list of traits: Can do, will do, team fit, damn quick and damn smart.

Hammond said he isn't afraid of scaring people off, since the best candidates "are constantly looking at themselves to excel, not just cross the finish line, but blow through the finish line."

When all 90 of the people on his staff meet that criteria, he said, "It's incredible. If you have 89 who do and one who doesn't — it's painful."

China is Reducing Costs Too!

You may think that China is mainly a source of cheap labor. While it is true that China DOES have cheap labor, it is also true that China is changing the way business is done... particularly with respect to introducing cost innovations that extend far beyond cheap labor, driving down costs for the mass market together with excellent execution with the "three faces" of cost innovation (offering high technology at low cost, a near-impossible range of choice, and "speciality products" at volume prices).

A new book, Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition, by Ming Zeng and Peter Williamson, makes the case that perhaps the largest 200 Chinese corporations are doing something far more important than merely offering cheap labor. They are introducing cost innovations that could truly change the way business is done everywhere!

You might want to have a look... to fully understand global competitive forces in the 21st Century.

Free Business Book Summaries!

A Miami, Florida business called getAbstract summarizes business books, enabling subscribers to be the best-read, most expert players on the business scene today. Their mission is to provide executives and business leaders worldwide with the best in business knowledge. They deliver this knowledge in concise summaries (audio or PDF) of the latest, sharpest and most relevant business books.

The firm offers the largest online library of business book summaries. More than 4,000 of the latest and most relevant business books - each summarized into five written pages or a short mp3 audio file. Learn the key points of any book in just 10 minutes. From Finance to Management, Sales to Careers - you'll never miss a trend!

Many of the world's largest companies offer their employees full subscription access to the getAbstract Library (check with your company to see if your firm already subscribes). Clients include some of the most sophisticated and knowledge-driven firms in business today. The customer base spans the globe and includes such household names as Microsoft, Citigroup, DaimlerChrysler, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP, Deutsche Post, UBS and Credit Suisse.

You might enjoy listening to two FREE summaries...

Listen to FREE MP3 Audio Summary

Listen to FREE MP3 Audio Summary

NASA Wants To Destroy Safety Data

If the government collected data that indicated that air safety was more risky than previously thought, would you expect it to destroy the data?

That's exactly what is happening at NASA!

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers. NASA directed its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, along with subcontractors, on Thursday to return any project information and then purge it from their computers before October 30.

NASA said nothing it discovered in the survey warranted notifying the Federal Aviation Administration immediately.

In its space program, NASA has a deadly history of playing down safety issues. Investigators blamed the 1986 and 2003 shuttle disasters on poor decision making, budget cuts and improperly minimizing risks.

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.

"If the airlines aren't safe I want to know about it," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-North Carolina, chairman of the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee. "I would rather not feel a false sense of security because they don't tell us."

So... the reason the data is being destroyed is that it might "affect airline profits"?

Doesn't sound like a good reason to me!

Trying to attain a personal goal?

Why not try a new online tool?

Two Brains

What is Two Brains?

Two Brains is an application that approaches the learning process in a different way. The application is built around goals, because in the end that's what you truly care about.

Benefits of Two Brains

Two Brains was designed with simplicity in mind. Identify what you want to learn. Create a ''Learning Goal''. Use the power of the network to help you achieve your goal.

With Two Brains, you and others can collaborate by sharing resources, comments, thoughts and ideas with one another. It combines social bookmarking and shared goals to support a community of learning. Once the network effect is achieved, you will experience a flow of learning resources that can deliver high quality content based specifically on achieving your goals. After all, we all know that two brains are better than one. Enjoy.

What is communication through knowledge management?

Click here to find out, courtesy of Lotus/IBM!

Here is an interesting idea... an online business simulation game !

Say it isn't so!

Maureen Dowd comments about the testimony yesterday of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker about current conditions in Iraq...

Do you think the Iraqi government is corrupt?

Where Dullards Rule

I just got off the telephone with a university in the northeast trying to propose a new course of study for their consideration.

Start at the top, right? So I originally wrote the president's office and was bounced, unexpectedly, to two other administrators... one in the graduate school and the other in their undergraduate department. No problem.

Trying to make contact with these two gentlemen proved to be a challenge (I was told that a shift in the date for their annual homecoming celebrations was the main cause), but eventually I called and called and was connected with both in turn.

The undergraduate fellow was extremely personable, and indicated that the subject matter for the proposed course was timely. This institution had a reputation in the discipline, but it had slipped in recent years, due to a focus on other matters. He urged me to speak with the graduate fellow, and indicated that he, himself, would follow up with him.

Chasing down the graduate fellow was a bit more challenging, but I finally secured a few precious moments with him on the telephone.

Ever get the the impression that you are a skunk at an outdoor garden party? This graduate administrator barely tolerated my call, and left me with the very strong impression that his mind was completely closed, and nothing I could do would possibly change it. This was later confirmed to me, in part, by the undergraduate administrator. I even offered that a foundation I had contact with expressed some interest in supporting the idea. No dice. Both administrators, after conferring amongst themselves, didn't want to "lead me on" or waste MY time" (Whose time?)

Why share this episode with you?

Just this...

When educational institutions are closed minded, we are ALL in a heap of trouble!

I've always thought of higher education as being an OPEN marketplace where all ideas are welcome and evaluated squarely on their own merits.

But that isn't necessarily true these days. We've become a nation where educational bureaucrats rule the roost, and conformity is the watchword of the day. So-called "accrediting agencies" enforce broad, across-the-board mediocrity standards, all in the name of stamping out a few bad apples in higher education, which exist, in the first place, because some states have exceptionally low licensing requirements.

Billions and billions are spent annually on higher education, and it just might be time for everyone to look beyond the ivy facades and glossy brochures and ask penetrating questions about what, exactly, we are getting for our money and how, exactly, our youth is being prepared for a tough, globally competitive life in the 21st Century. Are students getting a sound, useful, quality education, or merely paper "credentials" necessary to hoodwink a future employer's personnel department?

Such questions will rarely, if ever, be asked at that university I had the telephone discussions with today.

But if you care about your kids... and the direction of our country... you might start asking tough questions to those educators who really should know better.

It's time to think about change.

Given the "quality" of US management, and inflated pay packets,
is this really a surprise?

What does this trend mean for the future?

Take This Job... And OUTSOURCE It!

Large companies do it every day... and save substantial sums! Why shouldn't you use the global marketplace to complete small jobs around the office or home... and save significant amounts of money in the process?

Here's the challenge: Your boss tells you to create a corporate web page quickly, at low cost. How would YOU approach this problem? Ask around the office? Draft friends and neighbors? Search online for "web designers"?

There might be a better way.

More and more people are turning to the global marketplace to complete both business and personal tasks.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, outsourcing of small digital jobs around the home and office is becoming increasingly more common.

Jobs that were once done exclusively in Indiana are now being completed in India and other places at a fraction of the cost!

For example, say that you need math tutoring to complete a college course. A tutor in the U.S. might charge as much as $60 per hour. The same level of math assistance from India might be had for as little as $3 an hour... and you might have as many as 80 providers vying for your business!

Online sources for outsourced global labor include:

Guru.com

Elance.com

Rentacoder.com

Of course, this is not for everyone, or for every job... but you might consider it the next time you are faced with a small project.

Carly Fiorina Speaks Her Mind!

Ever wish you could sit down with a corporate CEO to discuss things?

Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard (1999-2005) recently spoke at Stanford University (audio file) about her journey from being a medieval history major, law school dropout, a secretary... to the leader of one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Fiorina describes ways in which leadership in business and entrepreneurship entails developing an appetite for risk and overcoming the fear of change. Fiorina offers her own 3Cs of leadership... capability, collaboration and character.

Isn't it interesting that many executives these days want to shrink their thoughts down to only words that begin with "C"?

Interested in the Future?

The future is where you'll be spending the rest of your life!

You might want to subscribe to "The Futurist" magazine.

Profit Optimization

The local paper today carried an interesting article about profit optimization... the art and science of re-arranging prices to generate maximum overall income... and profit.

This, of course, is a familiar story... airlines have been doing this for years. But now the technology is starting to be used in retail stores, and this is a trend that is definitely worth watching!

Leaders in the field include:

Profit Logic

Khimetrics

DemandTec

What do YOU think? How could this technology be used in YOUR industry?

NEW Business and Management Search Engine

Professionals and MBA students typically have very precise questions and information needs. General search engines may be great for general information about a wide variety of subjects, but wouldn't it be great to use a search engine specifically tailored for the task at hand... say, finding financial information about mergers and acquisitions?

Now you can!

A new search engine has just been released for business and management inquiries.

Xexco Ltd. today launched knuru, a new knowledge resource that uses natural language search to pull relevant results from business information. As part of the launch, knuru will feature top-tier articles and research from the Wharton School's business journal, Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu ).

knuru allows the user to search using K@W, knuru.com and the research function embedded in Microsoft Office. Natural language search allows users to type short descriptive sentences rather than keywords into the search box, and get deeply relevant responses to their queries. Rather than return a list of ranked Web pages, knuru delivers fewer, more targeted findings that are ranked and ordered according to the relevancy of the search query and are not influenced by page rankings or sponsors. The combination of natural search, ranked by relevancy from a pool of professional content, results in a superior search experience for users.

WorldBlu Article in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal has a feature article entitled “Can a Company be Run as a Democracy?” about select companies on the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces 2007 in the Monday, April 23 edition. Included in the article are Ternary Software, Honest Tea, and Continuum.

Fellow Member Traci is thrilled about the article and the fact that workplace democracy is hitting mainstream business thought. University of Phoenix students can read the article by logging into the Online Library and clicking on this link.

Feel free to share this great news with others!

Innovative Ideas for GMail...

I love information about how to do more with less.

Consider that we have only 24 hours each day, and an amazing amount of new information to digest. Might it be possible to COMBINE online tools that we already have to help cope with the increasing amount of new information?

Steve Rubel, a PR and marketing expert, offers 3 blog posts that suggest many new and innovative ways to combine Google Email with other products and services to either save time or do things you didn't know you could do!

1. Turn GMail into your personal nerve center,

2. More ways to use GMail as a personal nerve center, and

3. How to use GMail as a business diary and more tips.

More posts like this are on the way in the future...

Even if you don't use all or even any of Steve Rubel's suggestions, I think you'll appreciate the creative spirit with which he combines common everyday online tools to save time and do more.

Coming U.S. Challenge: A Less Literate Workforce

U.S. workers may be significantly less literate in 2030 than they are today.

The reason: Most baby boomers will be retiring and a large wave of less-educated immigrants will be moving into the workforce. This downward shift in reading and math skills suggests a huge challenge for educators and policymakers in the future, according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).

If they can't reverse the trend, then it could spell trouble for a large swath of the labor force, widen an already large skill gap, and shrink the middle class.

"There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years" where literacy and numeracy have declined, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston and one of the report's authors. "But if you don't change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face."

The decline in literacy is one of the more startling projections in a report that examines what it calls a "perfect storm" of converging factors and how those trends are likely to play out if left unchecked.

The three factors identified are: a shifting labor market increasingly rewarding education and skills, a changing demographic that include a rapid-growing Hispanic population, and a yawning achievement gap, particularly along racial and socioeconomic lines, when it comes to reading and math.

Read Full Story

College Students Seek Therapy in Record Numbers

The number of University of Washington students seeking new medical evaluations for mental health problems such as depression and anxiety has nearly tripled in the past five years.

At SPU, one-fifth of its undergraduate student body has sought therapy, many of the students reporting that they were suffering from stress.

Universities around the country -- including the University of Washington, Seattle Pacific University and Seattle University -- are reporting increases in campus mental illness, at times creating a backlog of cases and weeks-long waits to see a therapist.

No one is certain what's behind the phenomenon. Experts suggest that students today face greater pressures, taking on college loan debt to pay for rising tuition. Therapy is more socially acceptable, prompting more students to seek help. And students who once might not have attended college because of a mental illness are being diagnosed earlier, making it possible for them to go on to higher education.

"The generation that's in college right now grew up with Prozac advertised on television," said Alison Malmon, 25, executive director and founder of Active Minds on Campus, a grass-roots organization working to reduce the stigma of mental illness.

Study Finds Students Narcissistic

Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating, 'You're special,' and having children repeat that back," said Jean Twenge , the study's lead author and a professor at San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop today in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory asks for responses to such statements as, "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person," and "I can live my life any way I want to."

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' inventory scores have risen steadily since the test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

Goals & Needs - what psychological research tells us...

One of my favorite podcasts is a lecture series from Canadian TV Ontario entitled "Big Ideas", which offers the only ongoing series of academic lectures available on TV in North America.

Sometimes the topics can be a bit "dull and boring"... even for me!

At other times, however, the subject matter is just spectacular!

I've just finished listening to one such fantastic lecture entitled "Goals & Needs" (Best Lecturer Competition Week 4), by Professor Marc Fournier, University of Toronto at Scarborough, which lays out research-based evidence on what can make us truly happy.

You'll find Marc Fournier's lecture under "Professors 2007", 8th down on the list...

What the students say:
"Upon attending the first lecture with Professor Fournier, I was immediately drawn to his style of lecturing. The man refuses to STAND STILL!"
"He is definitely an inspiration, and a positive influence in my life."

One of the Members on my Management web page coincidentally just asked me to discuss the topic of goals and happiness!

You'll have to listen to the lecture to get the whole story, but the short answer is that intrinsic goals, based upon 3 universal needs of all humans, no matter where or in what country they might be located, work best of all.

Each and every human needs to be..

• Choiceful - exhibiting autonomy
• Capable - exhibiting competence, and
• Connected - exhibiting a relationship with others

Goals which address each of these 3 needs work best of all!

I really can't do this program justice with short excerpts, so you'll have to view the video or listen to the audio of the lecture yourself.

Not to be missed!

FREE Online Personal Financial Planning Course

University of California Irvine Campus Launches Free Online Financial Planning Course

Tuesday March 27, 12:01 pm ET

Tuition-Free Resource to Provide Financial Planning Information to the Public

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--University of California, Irvine is proud to announce the achievement of another milestone in the advancement of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement announcing the offering of a new course, "The Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning," designed to provide comprehensive online financial planning information to self learners and students worldwide.

Made possible by a generous grant from the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board), this free online course incorporates the UC Irvine Distance Learning Center's proprietary instructional design format, and will be made available at no cost to the public, worldwide, at ocw.uci.edu.

"UC Irvine is honored to be a part of the growing OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement, which aims to provide high-quality teaching and learning resources for the express purpose of increasing educational achievement and sustaining social and economic development," said Gary W. Matkin, Ph.D., Dean of Continuing Education at UC Irvine and head of UC Irvine's OCW initiative. "As part of our mission as a public university, it is important for our institution to provide educational pathways which cater to the needs of learners. The development of 'Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning' demonstrates UC Irvine's ongoing commitment to the goals of the OCW Consortium, and provides a comprehensive university-level overview of the 'nuts and bolts' of financial planning that is free and available to interested parties across the globe."

Whether consumers intend to do their own financial planning or just need basic information before meeting with a professional, this program provides a greater understanding of financial options. The robust curriculum was developed by Don Debok, CFP®, B.S., M. of O.E., assistant planner at Newport Planning Corporation and UC Irvine Extension course instructor, and is structured into eight modules which address the following topics: determining goals, creating a net worth statement, creating a cash flow statement, taxation, property and casualty insurance; life and disability insurance; long-term care insurance, investment basics, retirement funding, funding college education, and estate planning.

UC Irvine is the first to offer an educational financial planning resource of this caliber, free to the public. The course not only includes worksheets and links to financial planning resources, but offers a complete online educational experience containing a thorough explanation of financial planning.

The CFP grant has allowed UC Irvine to refine the existing curriculum in its UC Irvine Extension Personal Financial Planning Certificate Program, which is approved by the CFP Board, to suit the informational needs of the general public.

About CFP Board of Standards: Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) owns the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(TM), and the federally registered CFP (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete initial and ongoing certification requirements. The mission of CFP Board is to help people benefit from competent, professional and ethical financial planning. For more about CFP Board, visit www.CFP.net.

About UC Irvine's OpenCourseWare Initiative: UC Irvine is the first University of California campus -- as well as the only West Coast University -- to join the OCW Consortium. UC Irvine's membership in the OCW Consortium is consistent with its public and land-grant missions and its desire to play a significant role in contributing to the social welfare of the state, the nation and the world. Open Educational Resources (OER) showcase the University's high quality education and makes courses and course materials free for everyone in the world. UC Irvine's OCW is a large-scale, Web-based resource that houses educational assets that are discoverable, searchable, modifiable, and, best of all, free and easily available. Through the OCW Movement, UC Irvine provides university-quality courses and learning assets to populations of self learners that are underserved and in many cases, unable to participate in formal education at a university. This site also offers access to UC Irvine's online continuing education offerings. For more information about UC Irvine's OCW initiative, visit ocw.uci.edu or email ocw@unx.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.3 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

Offline Americans see Internet of Little Value

Study finds dial-up subscribers are converting to broadband but few newcomers in 2006.

Twenty-nine percent of all U.S. households (31 million homes) do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months, according to Parks Associates’ National Technology Scan. This nationwide project, now in its second year, found the main professed cause for non-subscribers is not economic but a low perceived value of the Internet. Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in anything on the Internet, and just 22% say they cannot afford a computer or the cost of Internet service.

More Than Half of U.S. Adult Workers Think America is Unprepared to Compete in Global Economy

Monday March 26, 8:51 am ET

MELVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--56% of U.S. adult workers believe America is unprepared to compete in a global economy according to a new Workplace Insights survey commissioned by Adecco. Further, three-quarters of employed adults (76%) agree that today's U.S. employers do not invest enough in training and development to keep the U.S. workforce competitive with those in other countries.

Other findings from the survey include:

• Nearly two-thirds of employed adults (64%) agree that the U.S. educational system is not providing workers with the necessary skills to be prepared for the jobs of the future
• 9 in 10 employed adults (92%) agree that strengthening the education system should be a top priority for the U.S. in the next decade
• Older adults (ages 55+) are significantly more likely than younger adults (ages 18-34) to agree that America is not prepared to compete in a global economy (59% vs. 48% respectively)

What companies can do:

• Issue a training and development report each year to all employees that outlines what training is scheduled to take place, how it will impact the organization, and how the company envisions improving employees' performance
• If possible, let your employee base know how much your company is investing in training and development and communicate how critical your company views its programs to the success and the growth of the company
• Celebrate successful training programs by showcasing examples of how people have implemented what they've learned into their work and also be candid about programs that weren't as effective and involve employees in making them better

Invest in your own career and training by:

• Dedicating some time to focus on your own career development. Assess how much time you spend each month on your career development. Is it 3 hours? 5 hours? None? Try to come up with a realistic number of hours you will commit to investing in your own career development or training by reading books related to your job, participating in professional organizations, taking a course, etc.
• Creating/updating your career map. A career map can help you determine where you would like to take your career, whether it's your next promotion or to help achieve your dream job. You should spend time at least once a year to assess where you are in your career, evaluate where you would like to go and outline some key steps to enable you to achieve your goals. Then, check in with your career map every few months or so to see how you're doing.
• Identifying something to do better every week. Each week, pick something related to your career that you can do better. It can be as simple as getting to the office a half hour earlier or as involved as improving morale on your team. With about 52 weeks in a year, you can really invest in improving your career performance by making this a ritual.

Scenarios - The Art of the Long View

Picking up on the idea that many useful business tools are frequently overlooked, inadequately explained, or completely ignored in higher education, my MBA finance class (MBA/540 Maximizing Shareholder Wealth) last evening started a spirited discussion about scenario analysis.

Perhaps the best known practitioner is Peter Schwartz, who wrote the leading book on the subject: "The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World".

I mentioned in the class that a simple explanation of this concept was available in an article by Lawrence Wilkinson, co-founder and, at the time, managing director of Global Business Network, in a special edition of Wired Magazine in 2001. I knew that Wired was one of the few publications that maintains a complete library of past issues online. While this is technically true, the publication must have changed computer systems or something, because the article about scenarios that is available online today contains a bunch of broken links, and lacks any of the helpful illustrations that appeared in the original print copy. (Note to self: Great idea! Poorly implemented.)

Not to worry! Technology to the rescue!

There is another wonderful tool that you should know about. It is called the "Way Back Machine", available at the Internet Archive, and this service preserves exact copies of many web pages that have sadly disappeared.

So... off I went on the Way Back Machine, and discovered a better copy of the scenario article, complete with all illustrations! By the way, sometimes the Internet Archive can be a bit slow to load, so if you don't see all the illustrations at first, fear not! Just hit the "Refresh" button on your browser to bring them up. I guarantee they are there...

Other examples of scenarios are available... such as the Internet 2050 video... five Tech Roadmaps.... and a Tampa Bay scenarios analysis which is quite wordy, pretty, the subject of a newspaper column, but ultimately doesn't have much "meat" in terms of who, what, when, where, how, and why...

Back to our story...

So... what do YOU think about scenario analysis?

How could you use the scenario analysis tool in your work... and in your personal life?

Wonderful, But Ignored Tools

We had an interesting discussion last evening in a course I'm currently teaching, Health Care Financial Accounting HCS/405, about the volume of wonderful business tools that have been developed at US universities and corporations, written up in prominent and prestigious academic journals and books... and then promptly ignored by practicing managers in the US.

Creating great new ideas and tools is a wonderful thing to be sure... but ignoring and forgetting what we already know and have developed is certainly not!

In our quest for academic credentials, it seems to be an acceptable practice for students to read about a useful concept, perhaps in a textbook, but have little idea about how to utilize and actually implement the idea in actual practice in the workplace.

I have been collecting wonderful, but little used business ideas for decades. Along the way, I have developed a long list of favorites.

Heading the list is a book I picked up at a bookstore in the late '80s called "Techniques of Structured Problem Solving - Second Edition" by Arthur B. VanGundy, Jr.

This book is a goldmine of tools and techniques for problem-solving. It contains 105 battle tested problem-solving techniques - 35 more than appeared in the First Edition.

Perhaps I have been hanging around with the wrong crowd, or reading the wrong materials, but I have never heard of this book, or its author, being mentioned by any practicing manager... or listed in any business reference.

Which is a shame...

What's the point of identifying 105 techniques to resolve your most perplexing problems, if no one takes the time to read... or discuss... the book?

Why bother to invent even more new tools and techniques, if we don't make good use of the ones we already have?

OK, so now it's your turn... what tool or concept would YOU like to nominate as the most wonderful, but largely ignored business tool?

Google University?

I've always wondered why universities have such antiquated computer systems...

Of course, in the old days, to have anything at all meant that you had to "create it yourself". The web has dramatically changed things, and I'm always surprised that the computer systems I use at universities are so far behind the times. That makes them almost unusable.

Of course, I do understand that some IT folks want to create "empires" for job security. But still...

This morning I heard about Google University... well, not EXACTLY "Google University" but Google services FOR universities!

Northwestern University, a powerhouse institution in the Chicago area, has partnered with Google.

@u.northwestern.edu, powered by Google Apps for Education, will provide advanced and easy-to-use tools such as searchable, two gigabyte e-mail services, a large integrated address book space, robust security features, integrated calendaring, instant messaging, online document collaboration, and online support.

The idea for the service began when students from the Associated Student Government (ASG) and the Graduate Student Association (GSA) requested such a partnership during a collaborative meeting with Northwestern University Information Technology (NUIT). NUIT announced that Google Apps for Education will soon available to students through "@u.northwestern.edu".

I personally have fallen in love with another Google product called Google Docs & Spreadsheets... as a matter of fact, that's exactly how I create all my blog posts, including this one.

Outsourced web services for major enterprises... what an idea!

Can other schools be far behind?

Are there commodities in your future?

Ever think there must be something else to invest in, besides stocks and bonds?

The New York Times carried an interesting article yesterday about the investment possibilities associated with commodities... things like corn, copper, lumber, natural gas and heating oil futures.

Diversification is one of the hallmarks of successful investing... and you definitely should consider diversifying across many different asset classes.

Perhaps up to 5% of a total portfolio might be invested in commodities.

The author suggests holding one investment fund that is heavily invested in energy and another in metals, or investors can assemble their own natural resources stock portfolio from individual stocks.

Can Learning Actually Be Fun?

Today's St. Petersburg Times carries a column by Robert Trigaux, Times Business Editor, about an MIT-inspired management simulation called The Beer Game.

Before you think that this is some kind of college chugging contest, I can assure you that the game is really all business, and based on the supply chain management book by John Sterman: Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World.

It should come as no surprise that MBA students flock to this simulation because it teaches and because it's fun!

Which is exactly why I ask the question... why don't we see more interesting simulations in higher education?

Must all "real" education be boring and dull?

Law Reviews... Still Relevant?

The Chronicle of Higher Education blog carried an interesting post today about law reviews (the official scholarly publication of law schools)...

Law Reviews Are Increasingly Irrelevant, Judges Say

from The Chronicle: Daily News Blog

The influence of law reviews, once the pre-eminent venues for legal scholarship, is in sharp decline, according to Adam Liptak, legal correspondent for The New York Times, in his Sidebar column today (TimesSelect subscription required). Judges don’t cite them nearly as frequently as they once did, preferring instead to use Westlaw or Lexis to dig up their own citations, and some jurists freely admit that they lack the time to keep up with an ever-widening galaxy of law reviews, some of them on quite narrow topics.

Meanwhile, the law-review articles have become less readable and less relevant, as the best legal writers and legal minds have reserved their analyses for blogs or for supporting briefs they file in cases that interest them. Summarizing a recent discussion at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law about the dwindling influence of legal scholarship on the courts, Mr. Liptak says nearly all the judges in attendance agreed the articles had minimal impact on jurisprudence. And he quotes one judge as saying of his law-review articles, “As far as I can tell, the only person to have read any of them was the person who edited them.”

Which got me thinking...

How much of what is done in higher education is similarly falling by the wayside due to great changes in technology?

What could we do, together, to embrace technology... and reverse these trends?

New York Times... Online!

Do you have an email address ending with ".edu"?

If so, you may be eligible for FREE online access to the New York Times!

This isn't just for news... it also allows you to search and read the Times archives for stories that might help you at work or in your studies.

I find the New York Times to be one of the best sources for information on technology and many other subjects... and now online access is available to you.

TimesSelect is now free for University Students and Faculty.

Find out if you qualify for a complimentary subscription to TimesSelect. You must be a student or faculty member with a valid college or university e-mail address to be eligible for this offer. You no longer need an access code to activate your TimesSelect University Subscription.

To start the process, provide your school e-mail address. If it is accepted, you will receive an e-mail from NYTimes.com with a link to continue your sign up process.

The Times will send an e-mail to the address provided. You must click on the link in that e-mail within 7 days to continue the sign up process.

If you do not receive the e-mail, check your spam mail folder and be sure e-mails from nytimes.com are not blocked by your spam filter. The subject line of the email will be "NYTimes.com: Confirm Your E-Mail Address".

A subscription to TimesSelect includes:

• OP-ED COLUMNISTS Enjoy exclusive online access.
• NEWS COLUMNISTS Explore the perspectives of select columnists from Business, New York/Region, Sports and The International Herald Tribune.
• THE ARCHIVE Explore The Times archive back to 1851. Access up to 100 articles per month.

Additional information about Times Select is available here.

Skype Prime - Make Money From Your Expertise!

Everyone is an expert at something! What do your friends call you about, seemingly on a daily basis? Computers, love life, or even how to bake a cake?

Now you can make money with your expertise... with callers from all over the world!

How? Check out the new Skype Prime service!

Establish a Paypal account to receive money people send you, list as many expertise topics as you would like to discuss with callers... and instantly people from all over the world can call and pay YOU for your wisdom and expertise!

Skype takes a 30% commission (which does appear high), limits your charges to $2.50 a minute or a $12 flat rate, and takes 4 months to credit your account... certainly not great... but the service just started, and I expect that these matters will be adjusted in the future due to competition.

So... what are you waiting for? Someone, somewhere wants YOU to share your expertise... and is willing to pay for it!

For example...

If you already have a Skype account... sign in... and see what one expert posted...

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

One of my favorite podcasts is the Harvard Business Review "Ideacast".

In Episode 31, Don Tapscott, author of "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything", talks about how online collaboration over the web changes everything, and makes possible amazing new business opportunities.

He starts off by describing how a neighbor used the Internet to find oil on property that his own staff could not find, using input from around the world, and ideas he had never even known about, much less considered.

Listen to the podcast... and read the book!

New Credit Card On the Horizon...

The St. Petersburg Times carries an article today about a new credit card, called the Gratis Card.

It cuts merchant fees 75% by processing through the Internet and offers consumers a card that, it claims, is more secure because it will not be printed with the cardholder's name or account number or have data embedded on a magnetic stripe. Instead, it will have a bar code that does not identify a particular account, and the cardholder will enter a personal identification number to make the transaction. No signature will be required.

The new card joins others on the market, such as Tempo Payments, which issues branded debit cards; or National Payment Card LLC, which converts driver's licenses and loyalty cards into debit cards.

Personalized Portable Radio... without the use of satellites!

News is out this morning about a new service that offers personalized, portable radio listening... without the use of satellites for delivery of the signal.

The trick? Use WiFi... and let the forthcoming device update itself when it comes within range of a signal.

Of course, if you really ARE way out in the boonies, you can also update the device by a satellite signal on the KU band... through the use of a docking station at home or in the car.

http://www.slacker.com/

Product Design - Update!

Gordon Bruce was kind enough to respond to an email that I sent him requesting additional information about his impressive design background.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I think the concept of product design is one of the most important, though frequently most overlooked, aspects of management education and a business career.

Here is some additional information about him for your consideration...

http://www.cdf.org/journal/0901_samsung.php

http://www.dexigner.com/product/news-g1872.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/101/samsung.html About the design school he helped to run for Samsung from 1995 to 1999.

http://www.changhong.com/changhong_en/about_en/12221_13982.htm Changhong (China's largest TV manufacturer)

He is also currently the head design consultant for Lenovo Beijing. (Last 4 years)

A Business Week review of his book can be found here: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2007/id20070129_164109.htm

Do You Need to Surf Anonymously?

Computerworld has an article entitled 'How to Surf Anonymously without a Trace'. It purports to offer tips on how to avoid detection by anyone attempting to monitor your internet access. You can set up your browser to use an anonymous proxy server to sit between you and the sites you visit. To use an anonymous proxy server with your browser, first find an anonymous proxy server. Hundreds of free, public proxy servers are available, but many frequently go offline or are very slow. Many sites compile lists of these proxy servers, including Public Proxy Servers and the Atom InterSoft proxy server list.

Business Schools... interesting article in today's St. Petersburg Times... "Schools' costs, ratings low"... Business Week's latest rankings of 93 undergraduate business programs... University of South Florida was dead last... The median starting salary for its business graduates is $35,000, tied for last place with the University of Kentucky.

Free Online Classes... would you like to learn about many things, such as technology, business, or even Chinese, for FREE?

Now you can! Visit the Self Made Scholar and pick up as many free courses as you like.

What a deal! And be sure to pass this link on to your friends, too!

Innovation... a new book entitled "Payback" makes the point that good ideas are not enough. You really need to "cash in" on the product. The authors identify 3 strategies... "Integration," becoming the sole owner and executor of the innovation and its only or primary beneficiary of rewards; "Orchestration," partnering on significant and important phases of the process as primary "owner" of the idea that drives its development; and serving as "Licensor," the owner of the idea and sometimes of its production and launching but having limited involvement thereafter. The authors analyze start-up costs, speed to market, speed to scale (time from launch until achievement of planned volume), and support costs to evaluate potential payback success.