Month: March 2014
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Finding Your Calling, In Kickstarter & Life
“Hand Raised In Worship” by KOREphotos via Flickr Imagine you want to start a business for customers who aren’t buying anything except satisfaction. That is exactly the model for creative project crowdfunding site Kickstarter, which just reached the $1 billion mark in pledges. Cofounder Yancey Strickler explained the motivation for participating in an interview with Charlie…
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Crushing Mr. Roboto ("Serious Business People Do Not Feel")
Photo by Handmade Stuffs via Flickr One of my favorite movies is Working Girl. I never fail to cry, rooting for good-hearted, hardworking, honest Melanie Griffith against the stuffy, scheming, not-too-original Sigourney Weaver. It is hard to pick my favorite scene. Is it where Sigourney gets her comeuppance, and she can’t remember the idea she stole from…
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The Next Frontier In Personal Branding: Rough Edges
Photo by cheesycheese01 via Flickr Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past 15 years at least, you have heard of the term “personal branding.” (Here is the classic 1997 Fast Company article by Tom Peters.) And then came Naomi Klein’s No Logo in 1999. Branding was more important than counter-branding, but slowly a backlash…
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One Team, One Principle, One Fight, One Brand
Photo by Thelmage Group via Flickr “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah; the rest is just commentary. Go and study it.” – Rabbi Hillel For the past few months, with the help of several business interns, I’ve been mapping out success metrics at work.…
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All Dysfunction Is Actually Functional. That’s Why It’s So Hard To Fix.
Photo (edited slightly) of Sugarloaf Mountain, MD by Silveira Nieto via Flickr. For change to be accepted, there must be a crisis that endangers the ecosystem. For proof of this, just look at how people get married. How A chooses B even though they are totally the opposite, and seemingly incompatible. On every episode of…
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Keep Your Eyes On The Quiet Ones
Photo by motti82 via Flickr A mentor of mine used to investigate corruption in the ranks. According to her, it was never the complainers who were the problem — although it would be easy for management to see them as trouble. Rather it was the quiet ones who tended to commit fraud. The ones who…
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That Weird Space Between Leadership And Management — And Why It Matters
Photo by Risager via Flickr Leadership managers (LMs) are both leaders and managers. These are second-line managers and above who must: Instruct and motivate people to produce work Monitor and measure their output Take responsibility for success or failure Many LM’s don’t even know they are LM’s. (And neither do their bosses fully understand what…
Management Excellence 