business

Italy’s Generali Board Ousts Chief Executive – WSJ.com

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The board of Assicurazioni Generali SpA ousted the insurer’s chief executive on Saturday, the company said in a statement, in a management coup that leaves a question mark over the future strategy of one of Italy’s most important companies.At the hastily-called meeting, 10 out of Generali’s 17 board members approved a motion of no-confidence against Giovanni Perissinotto, according to the statement and a person briefed on the vote tally. The board also named Mario Greco, chief executive of Zurich Insurance Group as Generali’s new CEO, the statement added.

via Italy’s Generali Board Ousts Chief Executive – WSJ.com.

Mr. Perissinotto said the reason for his ouster was political.

Really?

How to Be Happier at Work – Start Something!

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Start something. More specifically, start something outside of work.

via How to Be Happier at Work – Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown – Harvard Business Review.

Before you get mad at me take note of where this article comes from.  Harvard Business Review Blog Network is the source of this article.  This article reminds me of what I did several years ago.  I started something.

When I started something I had no clue what it was I started.  What I thought I started was not what I am doing today.  In other words, my original plan failed but ultimately my little business succeeded.

Take a risk.  Start something!

  What are you avoiding doing that you know needs to be done?”  We seem to have a talent for burying the truth, covering it up, distracting ourselves from it… When was the last time you took a risk in the direction of your dance?

Laurie Beth Jones

 

Teleworking Triples Over the Last Decade

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In its report, “The Incredible Disappearing Office: Making Telework Work,” The Conference Board finds that the advancements in home networking over the last decade have been accompanied by teleworking gains among a number of these technology-reliant professions, including insurance underwriters 4.5 percent, up 275 percent since 2001-2003 and computer software developers 6.1 percent, up 127 percent.

via Teleworking Triples Over the Last Decade – Insurance Networking News.

You Are Not A Computer – HBR

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The Internet, and all it has come to include, is the most powerful interruption technology ever invented. It slices and dices our focus, fractures and distracts it, gives us less and less of more and more. It prompts us to skim, scan, and skip rather than immerse ourselves in any one thing.

Technology has no business setting our agenda, but it has turned into our dominatrix. Masochistically — but all too willingly — we submit to it. Emailing, texting and tweeting, searching Google, checking Facebook, and surfing websites not only consumes our time and energy, it also diminishes our capacity to pay attention to anything for very long — or to resist the next digital temptation.

via You Are Not A Computer (Try As You May) – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review.

Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d They Do? : Planet Money : NPR

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Those ads went viral. They got twice the usual number of click-thrus, on average. The ad showed up more than 700,000 times. Basically, everyone in New Orleans on Facebook saw it. Twice. Pizza Delicious got close to twenty times the number of Facebook fans they usually get in two days. The guys were stoked.

via Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d They Do? : Planet Money : NPR.

I’ll cut to the chase so you don’t have to read or listen to the entire article.  It didn’t work.

After a long night of asking every single customer where they found out about Pizza Delicious, not one said it was through Facebook.

Maybe at some point, the new Pizza Delicious fans will show up and buy some pizza. But social advertising is so new that nobody knows for sure. It’s still unproven, untested and largely unstudied.

Update –

I read the article first, then listened to the podcast.  Listen to the podcast, it’s funnier than hell.