Work That Makes You Come Alive
John Chen has bungee-jumped from 120-foot-high bridges, walked over 40 feet of red-hot coals and parachuted from a plane. What was his scariest feat? "Trying to figure out how to leave Microsoft," he says. The software-design program manager finally quit the technology giant in mid-1999. Now, Chen, a self-described experiential educator, leads individuals on life-changing adventures -- such as cli... posted on Mar 16 2007, 3,341 reads

Never Check Email In The Morning
You read that right, "Never Check Email in the Morning"! It's advice from Julie Morgenstern, a leading time management and efficiency expert. She's helped companies like American Express, Microsoft, and FedEx revamp the way they work, and is a regular guest on Oprah. Her strategies stress among other things, the importance of deleting. In her words, "It could be catalogs when they come in, it cou... posted on Mar 05 2007, 5,020 reads

The Big Impact of Small Interactions
According to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 individual moments in a waking day. Each "moment" lasts a few seconds. If you consider any strong memory -- positive or negative -- you'll notice that the imagery in your mind is actually defined by your recollection of a precise point in time. And rarely does a neutral encounter stay in your mind -- the... posted on Feb 22 2007, 3,177 reads

A Dollar A Year CEO
In a letter sent November 2006, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey announced that he would take nothing more than a $1 annual salary, donating the rest and all future stock options to the company's two foundations. "The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happi... posted on Feb 19 2007, 3,562 reads

Vital Friends
In the recently published book "Vital Friends", author Tom Rath says people with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their job! His findings are based on a worldwide poll of eight million people by the Gallup Organization as well as information from the market researcher's employment engagement database. Rath says those with close friends at work are more likely to d... posted on Jan 23 2007, 2,743 reads

No Contest: Competition Versus Cooperation
In this seminal 1987 article, author and researcher Alfie Kohn analyzes competition vis-a-vis cooperation. Refuting what he calls the myth of competition promoting excellence, he puts forth the notion that optimal productivity not only doesn’t need competition, but that it seems to require its absence. Research Kohn cites shows that competition creates anxiety, inhibits the exchange of ideas and... posted on Jan 14 2007, 2,877 reads

Companies Learn From Social Networks
A new study suggests that losing an employee, at least in a high-tech field, is not necessarily as bad as it seems. "Firms can wind up learning when employees leave their firm, which is contrary to the conventional wisdom -- that firms learn by hiring away employees," says Wharton management professor Lori Rosenkopf. Why? Because, according to Rosenkopf, there are social networks that transcend co... posted on Jan 02 2007, 3,143 reads

A Company's Unusual Gift Of Art
With a vision to connect more people to the power and beauty of art, the Pacific Steel and Recycling company in Montana has given the public an unusual gift for the holidays and beyond. Thanks to them, all visitors to the local Museum of Art will receive free admission now through November 2007. The museum believes that this gesture of generosity will go a long way in nurturing an understanding an... posted on Dec 16 2006, 1,527 reads

Volunteerism Encouraged: a New Business Trend
A new and perhaps counter-intuitive trend in the business world? An increasing number of US companies are actually encouraging employees to volunteer their time. Some have even set up special departments to coordinate volunteer work and are hiring "volunteer coordinators" or "directors of community relations." Employees who choose to take part in such programs are given time off in exchange. Tim R... posted on Dec 06 2006, 2,561 reads

The Wisdom of Crowdsourcing
Remember when outsourcing was the buzzword? Well, the new concept is “crowdsourcing:” everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. Just as distributed computing projects like UC Berkeley’s SETI@home have tapped the unused processing power of millions of individual computers, so distributed labor networks are using the Internet to levera... posted on Nov 14 2006, 1,543 reads