Reframe Problems with These 5 Questions
I’ll admit it. I was embarrassed. And frustrated. I studied the problem. Interviewed experts. Meditated. Watched YouTube videos. Drew on a whiteboard. Asked my 3-year-old to draw on the whiteboard with me. But I was stumped. I was trying to solve a problem that on many levels seemed obvious, although when I got into the […]
Reading List: The Wisdom of Oz
It’s all up to you. Only you can unleash the power of personal accountability to overcome the obstacles you face and achieve the results you desire. Personal accountability means doing what you can do instead of focusing on what you can’t do. That’s the “big idea of the book,” the authors say of this follow-up […]
Reading List: Powers of Two
What attracts creative duos to each other? How do they align as well as differentiate their talents? Joshua Wolf Shenk blends psychology with neuroscience, business and leadership theory in his analysis of how famous pairs such as DNA discoverers James Watson and Francis Crick, the Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney, or South Park’s Matt […]
The Lyrical Life of will.i.am
A modern renaissance man, will.i.am is an entertainer, business consultant, entrepreneur, philanthropist and all-around lover of life. He’s even his own web address. Just type in will.i.am, he requires no www or dot-com. In interviewing for our October cover story (on newsstands Sept. 9), The Black Eyed Peas’ frontman shed more light on what makes […]
Reading List: Dream Year
Sixty-six percent of Americans hate their jobs. Are you part of that statistic? Ben Arment, founder of the coaching organization Dream Year, wants to help you reinvent your life and launch your dream career. Frustration is the accelerant that sparks our creative fires and motivates us to realize our entrepreneurial dreams, asserts Arment. According to […]
The 5 Parts to Your Credit Score
I am truly amazed—and a little scared, frankly—by this fact: It is 2014 and not everybody knows what a FICO score is. In this day and age, if you don’t understand FICO, you simply don’t understand your money. So here we go. FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corp., the company that over 50 years ago […]
Reading List: The Power of Noticing
Failure to notice and register what we observe can be a conduit to “poor personal decisions, organizational crises and societal disasters,” writes Max Bazerman, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. The Power of Noticing is based on a combination of the executive decision-making class Bazerman teaches, extensive research, firsthand experiences […]
5 Keys to a Viral Campaign
You’ve probably seen it 1,000 times on Facebook: Everyone, it seems, is dumping buckets of ice water over their heads. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has taken over social media this month as Americans have risen to the challenge to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a condition of the brain […]
Tech Tools: The Best Oranges in an Apple World
[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_large”,”fid”:”25801″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”height”:”350″,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”,”width”:”480″}}]] Best Android Phone HTC One (M8) (HTC.com) If you’re not going the iPhone route, one of the most popular operating systems for phones and tablets aside from Apple’s iOS is Google’s Android, and the HTC One (M8) is a clear standout Android option. Priced at $199.99 (with a contract), it comes armed with an […]
Hungry for Change: A Café That Serves More than Food
On a cold Chicago day in 2006, Susan Trieschmann and other students in her community college class visited a juvenile detention facility. She listened to a group of young men talk about broken homes, troubled families and lost opportunities. “I heard their stories and listened with my heart,” Trieschmann says. “And I couldn’t get that […]
Reading List: Factory Man
When globalization threatened his family’s business, third-generation furniture magnate John Bassett III of Vaughn-Bassett Furniture Co. fought back. His refusal to cave in to the pervasive push to manufacture offshore saved jobs and the company town of Bassett, Va. In her spirited, meticulously researched and well-written account, Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy spins a page-turning […]
John C. Maxwell: The Daily Routine of Successful Leaders
Whenever I speak, I like to chat with people, shaking hands and signing books afterward. Often during those times, someone will say something like, “I wish I could spend a day with you.” It makes me chuckle because, well, my days are pretty dull. Yes, it’s exciting to speak to an audience, and I truly […]