Brief thought exercise: do you find/believe that more people get promoted based on innate talent, personality, or ability to handle politics?

Toss out what you know/think/believe about performance reviews and the ascension of some to the manager level. Think about this one logically. If you’re going to get promoted, that ostensibly means (a) new (and broader) responsibilities and (b) possibly managing others (or… Continue Reading

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Could Smart Simplicity be the business model wave of the future?

Follow the bouncing ball here: 1. The Fortune 500 was created in 1955; since then, you can argue that the business environment is six times more competitive + complex than it was. 2. As the complexity of a business has increased, most management… Continue Reading

Maybe something called Slack could revolutionize the workplace

So many people you meet will spend time pursuing/chasing “Inbox Zero,” denoting it as a badge of accomplishment. But then, er, IBM has done studies indicating that a clean, organized inbox holds no essential benefit. Maybe it’s better to not organize… Continue Reading

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Machiavelli predicted business silos in 1513, but that doesn’t mean you have to be resigned to them

Check this out, via Harvard Business Review. Here’s a quote. Read it and then let’s talk context: It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success nor dangerous to handle, than to initiate… Continue Reading

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Say it with me now: your products and processes are great, but your people do matter

Here’s a new academic working paper, summarized here, that basically says if you hire a “star” — a great performer,then — your department will be 26 percent more productive. Now, there’s a huge caveat to this study: it focused on… Continue Reading

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You spend probably 1/3 of your day at work, if not more. But there’s no science around how to make work great. Can Google change that?

The Framingham Heart Study, detailed a bit in the video above and also here, began monitoring 5,000 people in the late 1940s and continues to this day; the super-longitudinal nature of the study allows for broader observations about health, heart… Continue Reading

Perhaps the idea of “brainstorming” doesn’t make any sense at all

It would seem logical that better ideas could be generated in a group as opposed to simply by individuals — more perspectives and viewpoints, and an inherent vetting process in real-time. But then again, maybe that’s not true: But no study has… Continue Reading

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If you want to start and nurture a creative company (like Pinterest!), you should drive across the American Southwest for a bit first

Remember that crazy-arse story about how eBay reinvented itself based on a secret, six-person trip to Australia? Here’s another blow for the “let employees do crazy road-trip based stuff, even if it’s not directly tied to revenue immediately” contingent: Pinterest employees… Continue Reading