The Find: Asian companies could teach western competitors a few things about managing big capital projects. The Source: A study in the McKinsey Quarterly free registration required. The Takeaway: When giant Indian company, Reliance Industries, set out to build an oil refinery and...
What do Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen Xers and Millenials Gen Y have in common? They are all working side by side in the workplace and the need to balance the generational differences is at its greatest ever. This diversity brings many advantages, from life experience and polished expertise...
Think the time you spend answering e-mail, composing IMs, and trolling Twitter doesn't have an impact? Think again. A recent study by research firm Basex puts the "cost of unnecessary interruptions" in terms of lost productivity and innovation at a shocking $650 billion. Merlin Mann blogged about the cost of...
The Find: Managers who believe in their employees' capacity to change and grow are more likely to provide them support and to spot changes in performance than those who believe you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The Source: "Managers' Implicit Assumptions About Personnel" in...
The Find: Poaching star performers from rivals is unlikely to yield the hoped-for results. The Source: Management Insights from the July issue of the journal Management Science. The Takeaway: The researchers analyzed the performance of star analysts over a period of nine years to...
Was the New York Times trying to be funny when it published its men's fashion feature, "Shorts Crack the Code?" In our BNET piece, Five Rules of Style for the Business-Casual Workplace, San Francisco business style consultant, Anthea Tolomei, relates the story of a recent trip to...
You've probably noticed what I've noticed: Soaring gas prices are finally, finally, causing people to change their behavior. Take me, for example. I now share my 44-mile commute into Boston with a co-worker, something I thought I would never do. So people are ready to change. How...
The Find: Like Lewis Carroll's red queen, companies in a cut-throat business environment can put so much effort into just keeping up with the competition that they fail to see they're getting no advantage for all their effort. The Source: The Random Rantings blog of Freek Vermeulen,...
Store owners who are skilled or lucky enough to be able to expand their retail operations to multiple outlets at some point must make a crucial decision. Is it better to manage these far-flung operations from a central HQ, or is franchising -- essentially giving local managers...
If you do a lot of reading or research in your job, taking notes the old-fashioned way can really slow you down as you're wading through tons of white papers or reams of reports. But here's a hack that's guaranteed to speed things up: an approach called the Morse Code...
As we know from last month's poll, most of you guys tip Firefox as your browser of choice. You like it because of its openness, customizability and security features, and because it's less prone to bugs and crashes. Now there's a way to get even more performance out of the...
It appears our workplace boozing post touched a few hot buttons, especially those of BNET reader, Acrebel, who is dead set against allowing any alcohol in the workplace, and who lays out a pretty tight case against it: I am utterly opposed to alcohol in the workplace, for...
A few weeks ago, I moved across the country to Brooklyn, NY. I don't recommend moving -- it's pretty freaking stressful -- but one of the great things about it is that you get to try out new stuff in a new environment. One of the new things I...
ATLANTA -- Coca-Cola Enterprises (NYSE: CCE) announced today that Pamela O. Kimmet has been named senior vice president, human resources, joining the company in May. Ms. Kimmet, 49, will oversee the development and implementation of global human resources initiatives and will report to John F. Brock, president and chief executive...
The cold war among proxy service companies has been getting a lot hotter lately. Proxy Governance, a proxy service firm based in Vienna, Va., has gone on the offensive by pushing for a "code of ethics" among its group which includes Glass Lewis & Company and Egan...
The Find: If you really want to motivate yourself and your company to root out jerks and their productivity and creativity sucking behavior, one business guru suggest you calculate your TCJ: total cost of jerks. The Source: An article entitled "Building the Civilized Workplace" by No Asshole...
Metalico Inc. MEA is one of the greatest heavy metal bands of our time. No, wait -- it's a steel company that recycles scrap metal and is reaping the benefits of rising demand.
Watch the AMC series "Mad Men," and you'd think that workplace boozing was key to productivity. Well, the three-martini lunch may be a thing of the past, but boozing and work still go hand-in-hand in many office cultures. From the company holiday party, to the monthly beer-bash,...
The Find: The ability to make good decisions is key to management and rests on a brain function called "executive function," but psychologists warn that this decision making function is far more easily depleted than once thought. The Source: A fascinating article in Scientific American....
Expanding on yesterday's blog on the diminishing ROI for business users of Facebook, Harvard Business Online blogger John Sviokla checks in with a positive look at its main competitor for business users, LinkedIn. His take: LinkedIn delivers tremendous reach to business professionals for a relatively small investment....
