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Let’s compare the 10 largest occupations in America in 1999 and 2013, shall we? (Pause for sigh.)

Before, we’ve talked about where jobs might be come 2022 — so eight years or so from now. But what’s happened to jobs in the past decade or so? Well, check out this chart, courtesy of Pew: Here’s the original… Continue Reading

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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Here are five things I’ve learned trying to get a job out of graduate school in 2014

I went to graduate school back in August of 2012. My career focus to that point had primarily been content (writing, editing, social), but what had begun to interest me was the idea of organizations and how they develop. At the point… 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

156 of 383 major U.S. metro areas saw their population grow faster than the national average from 2010 to 2013. No. 1? Austin, Texas.

It’s always interesting to see what areas of America are growing faster than others — it ties back to where jobs are, where quality of life is perceived to be highest, and where the ideas of the city about attracting… 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