Ten Tips for Senior Entrepreneurs | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour | PBS.
Great story. Click through to watch the video.
business success
Grad School May Not Be the Best Way to Spend $100,000 – Dorie Clark – Harvard Business Review
There are obvious cases where a graduate degree is mandatory; you’re not going to get very far as a doctor or lawyer if you haven’t done the requisite schooling. But what about everyone else? I often get inquiries from executives looking for advice about whether they should go back. Would an MBA, a JD, a doctorate in organizational psychology, or a journalism degree give them that extra edge? Often, the answer is no. There are a lot of things you could do with $100,000, and going to school because you aren’t sure what to do with yourself, or because of received wisdom that an extra degree is always helpful, could be a colossally misguided move.
via Grad School May Not Be the Best Way to Spend $100,000 – Dorie Clark – Harvard Business Review.
The Trader Joe’s Lesson: How to Pay a Living Wage and Still Make Money in Retail – Sophie Quinton – The Atlantic
Many employers believe that one of the best ways to raise their profit margin is to cut labor costs. But companies like QuikTrip, the grocery-store chain Trader Joe’s, and Costco Wholesale are proving that the decision to offer low wages is a choice, not an economic necessity. All three are low-cost retailers, a sector that is traditionally known for relying on part-time, low-paid employees. Yet these companies have all found that the act of valuing workers can pay off in the form of increased sales and productivity.
“Retailers start with this philosophy of seeing employees as a cost to be minimized,” says Zeynep Ton of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. That can lead businesses into a vicious cycle. Underinvestment in workers can result in operational problems in stores, which decrease sales. And low sales often lead companies to slash labor costs even further. Middle-income jobs have declined recently as a share of total employment, as many employers have turned full-time jobs into part-time positions with no benefits and unpredictable schedules.
Valuing people. What a strange concept, eh?
The Most Effective Strategies for Success – Heidi Grant Halvorson – HBR
Persistence over the long haul is key
via The Most Effective Strategies for Success – Heidi Grant Halvorson – Harvard Business Review.
America: A Nation of Permanent Freelancers and Temps
We are quickly becoming a nation of permanent freelancers and temps. In 2006, the last time the federal government counted, the number of independent and contingent workers—contractors, temps, and the self-employed—stood at 42.6 million, or about 30 percent of the workforce. How many are there today? We have no idea since 2006 was the last year that the government bothered to count this huge and growing sector of the American workforce.
Traditionally, being self-employed used to come with a social stigma; you were self-employed if you couldn’t get a “real job.” Work was inconsistent and so was the pay. Today, the opportunities for contingent, project-based work are exploding, as is the development of tools that allow people to work independently across industries like software, design, marketing, legal services, architecture, healthcare, and engineering.
via America: A Nation of Permanent Freelancers and Temps – Jeremy Neuner – The Atlantic Cities.
Seth’s Blog: Building your Backlist (and living with it forever)
Your history of work is as important as the work you’ll do tomorrow.
via Seth’s Blog: Building your backlist (and living with it forever).
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
What you post online stays forever.
Think before you post.
Change This – Lay Off Your Buildings, Not Your People!
Change This – Lay Off Your Buildings, Not Your People!.
It amazes and disappoints me that we treat humans more poorly than we do our buildings.
We treat them as more fungible. Our building leases are for set periods of time, and we can’t
get out of them, so we lay off our people and keep the buildings. There’s always a mismatch
in that businesses are continuously looking for talented people, but in tough times they have too
many people in aggregate, and in boom times they lose a lot of business opportunity because
they don’t have the bodies on hand to capture it. There’s a better way to address this challenge:
being less reliant on physical buildings, which will enable a more elastic workforce.
New Research: What Yahoo Should Know About Good Managers and Remote Workers – E. Glenn Dutcher – Harvard Business Review
We found that individual effort was highest in the 100%-in-house teams. The addition of remote workers reduced the in-house workers’ exertion.
And why did the in-house people reduce their effort when a teleworker was added to the team? Because they believed that the teleworkers were less productive. Which wasn’t true, by the way. We found no evidence that the teleworkers were shirking.
The implication is that teams containing teleworkers would benefit from knowing that remote members are working just as hard as everyone else. Managers can play a role in this, providing data about teleworkers’ productivity. Our research indicates that if team members know that all other members are working hard, the negative effect of including teleworkers in teams goes away.
So companies don’t have to get caught in a tug-of-war between letting their employees work remotely or forcing them to come to work and collaborate. Collaboration can happen even among in-house employees and teleworkers. It simply takes a different managerial skill set.
How Self Storage Facilities Are Wooing Business Customers & Why You Should Pay Attention – The Frugal Entrepreneur
Many assume that the only business use a self-storage facility can offer is storage. But today many of these facilities are now offering a complete range of services such as mail-boxes, office facilities, showers, meeting rooms, and even pick up and delivery that can help numerous businesses on a daily basis. Some self storage companies block off a certain set of the storage units specifically for business use.
Showers?
lifeunderwriter.net 
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