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.

Design Issues... in China

I've always been impressed with the concept of design. So many products I see and use are really poorly designed, from my perspective. Even the Apple Video iPod, which I love dearly, really doesn't make the grade in my book, due to several flaws I've identified. Yes, the iTunes software really syncs nicely with the device, but I consider it moderately hard to work with, especially for podcasts, which is the main reason I bought the device in the first place. I've noticed... and others have as well... that Apple has some strange system for randomizing the playback of podcasts, such that it is common to get a steady flow of podcasts from the same source, when what I really want is truly random play. I tolerate this annoyance because... well, there really isn't anything better on the market, is there (can you say "Zune"?).

I just listened to a great podcast about the general topic of design by a real master... Gordon Bruce! He talks about the history of design, discusses his recent book about "Eliot Noyes", and chats at length about how design applies in China.

Gordon Bruce is an industrial design consultant who worked for Eliot Noyes from the late sixties until Noyes' death in 1977. He lectures internationally on design and is a regular guest judge and critic for schools and competitions. He has served as advisor to the International Industrial Design Conference of Aspen and was Chairman of the Product Design Department of the Innovative Design Lab of Samsung. His own designs and writings have appeared in numerous magazines including AXIS, Scientific American, Domus, ID and Time. He lives in Connecticut.

You can't miss this podcast!

FREE Stock Trades!

Might it be possible to trade stocks without paying commissions?

Check out this article from Business Week!

Knowledge is Power... NYT Article

An interesting article in Sunday's New York Times was entitled "Knowledge Is Power Only if You Know How to Use It"

Click on it to read it.

It reports on research being done at the ASU Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, and Columbia University. You may also wish to read some of the ASU Newsletters.

The author of the article is the Executive Director of a research organization located in San Francisco, CA. that focuses on environmental issues.

Leadership

John O. Wynne

Landmark Communications
Darden School of Business Speaker - 10/2/03

Leadership definition: a leader is a person...

1. Responsible for people and results.

2.Who posses highly regarded cognitive skills, work experiences, and technical skills.

This would describe a manager. In addition, a leader is one who...

1. Seeks to create a vision and strategies for the future, which reflect a deep contextual understanding of the competitive marketplace.

2. Who aligns people behind visions and strategies.

3. Who consistently lives and reinforces great values in the culture of the organization.

4. Who communicates, communicates, communicates!

5. Who sees his/her job as primarily about finding, developing, mentoring, and motivating great people.

6. Who has empathy - a genuine interest in the success and well-being of those with whom he or she works... but is also tough-minded about results.

7. Regularly pursues and is excited about new learning and change.

8. Is flexible, self-aware, and determined enough to follow through and adapt, so that successful change is embraced and implemented.

9. Finally, achieves sustained, long-term results.

Prof. John Kotter, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1990, "What Leaders Really Do".

Leadership and management are different and distinctive, and both are necessary for business success.

The leaders primary responsibility is to lead meaningful change.

Companies emphasize management development too much and do not place enough emphasis on leadership development. Prior to the late 1970s, practically all the literature talked about management and management systems, and very little attention was paid to leadership, and the difference between leadership and management. Kotter would say that the ideal would be the combination of the two. It is rare when one is outstanding at both. It takes a team approach. It is extremely difficult to take the time to do both well, and besides, the skill sets are very different and sometimes conflicting.

The great leader delegates almost all management responsibility, but knows enough about operations, based on career experience, to monitor, support, and aggressively challenge those in operations. Beyond this, Kotter would contrast a leader as follows - a leader copes with change; a manager copes with complexity and organization. A leader sets direction, vision, and strategies; a manager plans and budgets. A leader aligns people behind change; a manager organizes and creates systems and staffs. A leader motivates and inspires; a manager controls and solves problems. A manager keeps the trains running on time to achieve targeted results. He or she coordinates through systems and defined responsibilities, the activities of an organization, to avoid inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and chaos. A manager delivers the plan.

Because of the need for predictable performance, most managers are highly resistant to change, and tend to only see the need for change belatedly, often after competitors have already started to move in a new direction. This is why leadership is so important to keep organizations viable and competitive in our ever-changing marketplace.

Confirm a company's commitment to developing leaders, and verify by seeing how many high potential employees occupy meaningful leadership positions where change in needed. If they wait to do this until someone has earned their management stripes and are in their 40's and 50's, beware.

Many aspects of leadership can be learned. You do need to have management experience to lead best, but you also need leadership experience where you are responsible for change. Most CEOs are leaders, much more than managers. If you want to lead, it rarely just happens naturally. It normally evolves based on experiences.

Most important factors: values, empathy, new learning, and developing great people.

1. Values, integrity, and high character are essential to sustain leadership. The vast majority of people respect those who are honest, fair, consistent, and hard working. When their boss does not reflect theses characteristics, uncertainty, fear and discouragement permeate an organization. Decisions are difficult and solutions are not always obvious. You need a set of core values to make difficult judgments that are logical, defensible and consistent, and yet provide a basis for fresh, innovative thinking. As a first step, assess your own values and priorities. Write them down. Some structure is important [like Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (and his 8th Habit)] that give you the questions you need to ask yourself. You need to develop your own list of what these probing questions should be, what you like and dislike, what's going to give you satisfaction, what are your aspirations, what do you just abhor doing. John O. Wynne does this every 10 years with fifty such questions. What will take you to and through the next level of engagement, so that you still have a dynamic future ahead of you? People often idealize or overstate the reality, so beware and share your thinking with a close friend who knows you well, and who can keep you grounded in reality.

2. Probe deeply about the values and culture of the companies you are considering working with. What are their distinctive values and how does the company reflect them? How will you fit with your values? How good is their top leadership? Everyone talks a great game. You need a feel for really what does make them click. There are only a handful of companies that have great values and deliver long term sustained results. Find someone who knows that field, and be sure your judgments about it are correct, so that you can understand, contextually, how that company fits into that business segment. If you join a company and then find that their values and expectations are not what you need, get out of there. Keep your skill set strong enough so that you have the mobility to do that.

3. The best leaders are those who are empathetic. They have a genuine interest in the success and well-being with those with whom they work, but who also are tough minded about results. You can't fake empathy. People know by your comments and actions whether you care about them, or only about yourself and your results. If you don't care, people feel manipulated and have reduced enthusiasm for their jobs. They feel like pawns, a commodity. Daniel Goleman says good leaders, in addition to being smart, experienced and skilled, have a high degree of emotional intelligence, which is twice as important as other factors in long term leadership success. He defines emotional intelligence as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills ("What Makes a Leader?", Harvard Business Review, Nov-Dec 1998). Empathy is the real differentiator. Most senior leaders are terminated through the loss of respect and confidence by their direct reports. They stopped caring about their people, and cared too much about what they were trying to get done. How much do you care about others succeeding and doing well? Does your personal contact with them reflect this? Are you willing to give credit to others? Do you take the time to bond over a meal with them? Do you listen to learn, not merely processing responses instead of trying to absorb their full message? This is very important for respect. Without a major life-changing event like loss of a job or death in the family, people have a hard time learning empathy. It can't be faked on a consistent and sustainable basis. People know what is real and perform best for those genuinely interested in them. Take a look at how generous or tough they are with their family and health benefits. Check the depth and breath of their development programs. Jack Welch at GE was was empathetic. He bonded with people, developed them like mad, but insisted upon results. He was fair, everyone knew the rules. Empathy does not mean that you have to rationalize poor performance.

3. New learning is essential for meaningful leadership. The status quo in business is maintained when change in the business environment and other new learning is not understood and brought into the organization. You would be amazed by how little time is devoted to this task by most managers and even many leaders. Your learning curve in a university is fairly vertical. When you return to the workplace, don't let it stop. Read, get new training, establish discussion groups, allocate time, insist on it, and stick with it. When looking for a job, probe this point deeply. Find out how an organization and its people pursue new learning. is it formalized or is it just expected as part of the job? Be careful. How does a company share new learning and changes in an organized way across the entire company? When hiring, find ways to probe how consistently the person pursues new learning, and how they embrace change. Find out what jobs they have had, and how they have changed. It is hard to change a business successfully if there is not a deep contextual understanding of new variations and probabilities.

4. The best leaders' top priority is finding, developing, mentoring and motivating the best people. If you do this well, and delegate, and mentor appropriately, you can get out of the way almost literally and achieve great results. Unless you start to discipline yourself in your first leadership position, you will spend too much time on yourself, and not enough developing people to build lasting and broad-based strength in an organization. In fact, developing others may be the most selfish thing you can do, and thus enhance your own value. The CEO at Cummins Engine requires their high-potentials to spend at least 2 or 3 years in HR to learn this lesson early and how to do it well. He had done it. How many of you would think that an HR job would enhance your career right now? Not many, I would guess, and I would not have either at this stage of your life. Think about it. The best leaders spend much of their time finding and developing the best people. They actively mentor, but they are fair about it and just don't favor those they mentor. When looking at a company, check this out. Is mentoring embraced in the company, or simply a topic of conversation? How many top managers were promoted from within? Does the company have formalized training, like GE's Crotonville - John F. Welch Leadership Center or Landmark Communications Senior Leadership Development Program? If they don't, be careful about all these things.

Hopefully, some of this will resonate with you and cause you to think deeply about some of this as you go forward. But you have to do it, live it, and observe how others do it. You want to be proud of the people you are working with. Be consistent, true and honest. Many companies talk this game, but very, very few live it. See Jim Collins book, "Good to Great".

People + Values + Systems (how we do it to achieve great things) + Ethics

Without leadership, an organization cannot thrive long term. Be able to follow through, adapt and implement change. Ask interviewers for examples and ask to meet some of those people. Stability vs. change. Leverage comes from utilizing teams, people subordinating their egos to work together for the greater good, alignment and ownership. Some people peak out because they resist change (often in their late 40's and 50's) unless you figure out how to re-create yourself. These people hadn't.

Microsoft Executive Says Consumers Are Leading Technology

CNN has an interesting brief interview with a top Microsoft executive here.

Nicola Pratt, a lecturer in international relations at the University of East Anglia, in England, tells The Guardian that she was once one of those "disgruntled" academics who berate students for using Wikipedia in their essays. But then Ms. Pratt had an epiphany: Instead of complaining to her students, why not recruit them to make Wikipedia better?

The lecturer is now asking her graduate students to edit eight Wikipedia articles -- on contentious topics related to the politics of the Middle East -- and to make them more balanced. Ms. Pratt has also told students they must create a new article of their own.

3 Reasons To Avoid Penny Stocks

For starters, the vast majority of tiny, unprofitable companies are such ridiculous long shots they don't even merit your attention. Other than that...

• Most companies offering penny stocks have little if anything in the way of profits, not to mention the first prerequisite: sales.
• Secondly, you could drive a cement mixer through the bid/ask spread on many of these shares. If a stock is offered at 30 cents and bid at 24 cents, for instance, you're down 20% as soon as you get your trade confirmation. (And that's before commissions.)
• Thirdly, penny stocks are thinly traded and easily manipulated.

You may buy a penny stock and see it zip higher, but then have trouble getting out. It's pretty disheartening to know you can drive down the price of a stock simply by selling your shares at market.

http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2007/20070305.html

Use Your Brain to Play Games

A San Francisco, California-based company has debuted the first-ever commercial controller that can process human thoughts. Emotiv Systems, which specializes in brain computer interface technology, said on Wednesday that it has created the first brain computer interface technology that can detect and process both human conscious thoughts and non-conscious emotions. The technology, which includes a headset and a suite of applications, allows computers to differentiate between particular thoughts such as lifting an object or rotating it; detect and mimic a user’s expressions, such as a smile or wink; and respond to emotions such as excitement or calmness.

http://www.emotiv.com/

Yale School of Management Studies Blogs

In their study, the authors set out to explain how blogs become popular despite a number of obstacles to readers such as the large number of blogs available, the variable quality among blogs that feature similar types of content, and blogs' lack of brand equity. The authors argue that blogs differ along two dimensions: the ability to break news and the ability to find news in other blogs. Hence, a consumer learns about the blog's quality from the blog's posts and links.

http://www.cci.som.yale.edu

BBC plans to compete online with iTunes

By Neil Midgley, TV & Radio Editor

Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 07/03/2007

BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, has unveiled ambitious plans to compete with music and video download service iTunes.

John Smith, BBC Worldwide's chief executive, laid out a far-reaching commercial vision for the BBC's new iPlayer software.

The iPlayer has been developed by the BBC itself, and is expected to be approved by the BBC Trust later this spring. It will fulfil a public-service remit by giving UK licence-fee payers a seven-day "window" to catch up with BBC shows online, but Mr Smith said that BBC Worldwide also wanted to generate revenue with advertiser-funded content and pay-for downloads.

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Controversially, Mr Smith invited other broadcasters to participate in the iPlayer, comparing it to an online version of Freeview or BSkyB's digital satellite platform.

The move is just the latest announcement from the BBC about its new media ambitions. Last week, it put some of its clips on video-sharing website YouTube, and it has announced that it is working with IBM on a video-based search facility for its library of children's programmes.

China cracks down on `virtual money'

http://www.tencent.com.hk/index_e.shtml

BEIJING (AP) -- Regulators have ordered Chinese Web sites to limit the use of "virtual money" after concerns that the online credits might be used for money laundering or illicit trade.

The order governing credits sold by Web sites to customers to pay for online games and other services comes amid a campaign to tighten official control over China's online industry.

The most popular Chinese online credits are "QQ coins" issued by the Web site Tencent.com, which has 220 million registered users. A man who answered the phone Wednesday in Tencent's publicity office refused to say how many of the credits it has sold.

Financial experts cited by Chinese media said the growing popularity of "QQ coins" could complicate the government's ability to control the flow of real currency, and the central bank has issued a warning about the use of virtual money.

News reports in January said customers are using online credits to gamble, pay for phone-sex services and to shop online. Authorities said they were looking into whether the credits were being used as a way to launder money.

Regulators told Web sites to bar the use of credits for buying goods or other unauthorized purposes, according to the order, issued jointly by several ministries. It was sent to Internet companies last month and publicized by state media this week.

China's central bank "is strengthening the standards and management of virtual currency used in online games," said the order. It said the bank was "strictly limiting" the use of virtual currency and told Web sites to make a clear distinction between online credits and money used for e-commerce for real goods.

Users are barred from trading virtual currency for real money, the order said.

The latest order gave no details on whether authorities had confirmed the credits were being misused.

China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users after the United States, with 137 million people online, according to the government.

The communist government promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to block its public from seeing material deemed obscene or subversive.

President Hu Jintao ordered regulators in January to promote a "healthy online culture" to protect the government's stability, according to state media.

The government has barred local authorities from approving new Internet cafes this year.

WorldBlu announces thirty-four companies that made the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces 2007 as a part of the first annual Democracy in the Workplace Day!

Businesses and non-profits from the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Russia made the premiere list, representing industries such as technology, telecommunications, media, manufacturing, and retail with a combined total of nearly $3 billion in annual sales.

Among the organizations that made WorldBlu Most Democratic Workplaces 2007 premier list were Great Harvest Bread Company, GE Aviation’s Durham Engine Facility, Honest Tea, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, Equal Exchange, Linden Lab (makers of the Second Facility Life virtual reality world), Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, SRC Holdings Corporation, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, i-Free, and Threadless.

Here are a few ways that the companies on the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces 2007 practice democracy:

• At Linden Lab, makers of the highly successful Second Life online virtual world, key financial data is openly shared in real-time on giant flat-screen TVs, employees are encouraged to chose their own work rather than be told by someone else what to do, and they show their appreciation for one another by “sending love” through their “Love Machine” software program.
  

• Great Harvest Bread Company calls their franchise model a “freedom franchise” because it nurtures creativity, excellence and a true sense of ownership.
  

• At Continuum, a design consultancy in Boston with offices in Milan and Seoul, they have “open town forums” each month.
  

• The Grammy® Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra based in New York City is completely conductorless, rotating leadership amongst orchestra members.
  

• At Equal Exchange, the employee-owners elect their Board of Directors and hold six of the nine seats.
  

• GE Aviation’s Durham Engine Facility is flat, with just one Plant Manager for 260 employees.
  

We’re so excited about this list and what it means for the future of democratic in the workplace and we hope it’s inspiring for you as well. Please view the entire list by going to our website at http://www.worldblu.com

Buffett seeks a 'New Buffett'

In annual report released Thursday, the world's greatest investor says he's looking for an understudy - job-hoppers and money-grubbers need not apply.

By Carol Loomis, Fortune editor at large

March 1 2007: 3:59 PM EST

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Running what is in effect an ad for talent, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, 76, says in the company's just-released annual report that he plans to hire a younger person - or perhaps more than one - to understudy him in managing Berkshire's investments.

Buffett hopes to find, he says, a candidate to "succeed me as Berkshire's chief investment officer when the need for someone to do that arises."

In the same section of the annual report, Buffett writes, "I feel terrific and, according to all measurable indicators, am in excellent health." Jesting about his infamous non-diet, he adds, "It's amazing what Cherry Coke and hamburgers will do for a fellow."

Buffett says the plan to hire an investment manager was discussed fully at Berkshire's October board meeting and recognizes that the company's succession plans on the investment side of its business are not well-developed.

In contrast, he says, repeating a statement he has made previously, Berkshire has three outstanding candidates - all much younger than he - to replace him as CEO. The board, he writes, "knows exactly who should take over if I should die tonight."

Picking the right person to hire on the investment side will not be easy, Buffett says. "We need someone genetically programmed," he specifies, "to avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered." Other talents he will be looking for, he says, are "independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior."

Buffett adds that Berkshire will face a special problem in keeping the person it hires. "Being able to list Berkshire on a resume," he says, "would materially enhance the marketability of an investment manager. We will need, therefore, to be sure we can retain our choice, even though he or she could leave and make much more money elsewhere."

Buffett mentions Lou Simpson, 70, who has managed the investments of Berkshire subsidiary GEICO for more than 25 years and whom Buffett sees as his investment backstop right now, as the type of person Berkshire would hope to hire. Buffett says that though Simpson "has earned large amounts," he could have left long ago for a much more lucrative spot if "money alone had been the object." Says Buffett: "We need to find a younger person or two made of the same stuff."

Buffett says that he will be helped in his search for someone to hire by Simpson and by Berkshire's vice-chairman, Charles Munger. At the end of 2006, Berkshire had $61 billion in equity investments; $28 billion in fixed-income securities; and cash holdings of $43 billion.