Photo from Wikihow: Get a Man to Ask for Directions Currently located at myalli.es (I know, I know) the company will shortly relocate to myallies.co The problem we solve is that women don’t like to ask for help. Numerous studies show that by not asking for help, women disadvantage themselves in their careers and in […]
Truth or lie? Negotiating 101
Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler offers some smart strategies for negotiating the best deals possible. Most importantly, by observing your opponent carefully you can often gain the upper hand, so you must “listen with all your senses.” This includes keeping an eye out for “micro-expressions”—those fleeting, involuntary facial movements that indicate what your counterpart […]
Boot camp for aspiring CEOs
Fast-track executives pay $27,500 to attend a five-day program called Top Talent, put on by management consultant RHR International. They learn that the promotion to chief executive is nothing like their many previous promotions. The top job is complex, lonely and laden with land mines that could blow up if they lean on the very […]
Building blocks of organizational success
Employees don’t function in a vacuum, responding solely to their own agendas. Rather, they act on a broad range of conditions within the company—what they see and understand and how they’re rewarded (financially and otherwise); objectives, incentives and career alternatives; and what they’re encouraged to care about. Strategists and organizational experts from Booz Allen Hamilton […]
Where fear rules, ideas go underground
Every CEO wants their industry’s next big idea to emerge from their own company—but few today are willing to take the risks that would enable that to happen. The out-of-the-box thinking that was so popular during the ‘90s boom has been replaced by layoffs, cutbacks and shelved expansion plans. What many executives are calling “austerity” […]
Sharing 101
In an era when businesses put a high price on knowledge, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some workers are “knowledge-hoarders”—steadfastly resisting all efforts to cooperate in enterprise-wide knowledge management programs. The reaction is predictable, considering the past several years’ repeated rounds of layoffs, which have prompted workers to hoard information, take individual credit […]
Find the solution, then the problem
Identifying a problem isn’t always the first step in the innovation process. Sometimes the solution comes first, say Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres, authors of “Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small.” After all, no one thought to themselves, “Kids really need a scooter that spins more easily.” Instead, […]