A Hippocratic Oath for Managers
On June 3rd an unusual oath was taken by more than 400 students graduating from Harvard Business School. At an unofficial ceremony the day before they received their MBAs, the students promised they would, among other things, "serve the greater good", "act with the utmost integrity" and guard against "decisions and behaviour that advance my own narrow ambitions, but harm the enterprise and the soc... posted on Jun 08 2009, 4,482 reads

The Art of Dialogue
What's the secret of good conversations? Bill Isaacs, the author of "Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together" and director of the Dialogue Project at MIT's Organizational Learning Center, says that people need to build specific skills and to appreciate the separate stages of a good conversation. This Fast Company article outlines a few key skills, followed by a description of those stages that a... posted on Jun 01 2009, 5,351 reads

Bankrupt and Wealthy
On December 11, 1995 a fire burned most of Malden Mills to the ground and put 3,000 people out of work. Most of the 3,000 thought they were out of work permanently. A few employees were with the CEO in the parking lot during the fire and heard him say "This is not the end." With these words began a saga that has made Aaron Feuerstein a legend among American leaders and a hero to his employees.... posted on May 25 2009, 4,366 reads

Drucker's Advice on Managing Oneself
When it comes to managing careers, the advice isn't surprising: "We must each be our own chief executive officer. Simply put, it's up to you to carve out your place in the work world and know when to change course. And it's up to you to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years. To do all of these things well, you'll need to cultivate a deep understanding... posted on May 23 2009, 4,687 reads

The Art of Getting Things Done
You know the drill. It's Monday morning. You arrive at work exhausted from a weekend spent entertaining the kids, paying bills, and running errands. You flick on your PC -- and 70 new emails greet you. Your phone's voice-mail light is already blinking, and before you can make it stop, another call comes in. According to David Allen, 54, one of the world's most influential thinkers on personal prod... posted on May 18 2009, 12,639 reads

Extraordinary Minds
Mozart, Freud, Virginia Woolf and Gandhi. Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard, in one of his books, "Extraordinary Minds," examines these four people of tremendous ability. Using these four extraordinary, but very different, people, he attempts to answer a question once posed by Plato and still asked today: Is there a set of traits that is shared among all great achievers no matter how different ... posted on May 10 2009, 3,460 reads

A New Approach to Social Problems
People who wanted to solve a social problem -- like lack of access to clean water or inadequate housing for the poor -- used to create a charity. Today, many start a company instead. Experts concede that not all social problems respond well to the for-profit model. "If you set it up as a business, you might be able to raise money more quickly and grow more quickly," says David Bornstein, the autho... posted on Apr 18 2009, 2,372 reads

Getting Important Things Done
"Busy people have two options when they decide how their workdays will go: they can choose to be reactive to urgent demands on their time, or proactive about focusing on what they decide is important. The only way to actually get things done is to mitigate the urgent to work on the important. Let's differentiate between what I call urgent and important. [...] More often than not "the urgent" is pu... posted on Apr 16 2009, 8,202 reads

Why 'How' Matters
In his 2007 best-seller "How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life)", Dov Seidman showed us how to navigate more than just business. The book's premise was fairly simple --in our hyperwired and hypertransparent world, how you do things matters more than ever because products can be copied, expertise can be bought and your customers, not your PR agencies, write your re... posted on Apr 12 2009, 3,656 reads

No Time for Complaining
There may be a positive byproduct of our troubled times: a decrease in the urge to complain. Job satisfaction is actually up, and according to a December 2008 survey almost 38% of respondents said they were "very satisfied" with their jobs, compared with 28% in 2007, a likely sign that people are grateful they're still employed. And every week now, we hear reports of workers accepting pay cuts or ... posted on Apr 07 2009, 4,530 reads