Deepak Chopra on Your "Super Brain," Work Stress and Creativity

Deepak Chopra on Your "Super Brain," Work Stress and Creativity: Is the brain a verb or a noun? One of two questions, Deepak Chopra M.D. tells me, that would stimulate an e-mail exchange between he and neuroscientist Rudolph Tanzi, Ph.D. leading to the co-authoring of Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being.

3 Tips on How to Negotiate with the Tiger

3 Tips on How to Negotiate with the Tiger: When viewers first lock eyes with the roaring Bengal tiger onboard the lifeboat in the recently released movie “Life of Pi,” many will probably jump back in their seats. Even though almost all the images of that tiger were computer generated, the creature is fearsome enough to provoke a spontaneous physical reaction.

10 New Year's Resolutions That Will Jump-Start Your Career

10 New Year's Resolutions That Will Jump-Start Your Career: Many of you will resolve to do a whole host of things in 2013. Some will vow to eat healthier, lose weight, or save money?while others will pledge to land a new job, get a promotion, or earn more money.

Seven Ways To Be Indispensable At Work In 2013

Seven Ways To Be Indispensable At Work In 2013: The New Year is, for many, a time of change and resolutions. Be thinner! Be richer! Meet the love of your life!

The Secret to Creativity and Productivity

The Secret to Creativity and Productivity: Do you ever find yourself thinking, "Well, I could move to San Francisco, or New York, or China, or Chile! And I could work in tech, or fashion, or marketing, or something else!" while another voice in your head says, "This is my list of things to do today. I need to go buy groceries, book a bus ticket for tomorrow's trip, follow up with Joe from the conference... "

Top 10 Qualities That Make A Great Leader

Top 10 Qualities That Make A Great Leader: Having a great idea, and assembling a team to bring that concept to life is the first step in creating a successful business venture. While finding a new and unique idea is rare enough; the ability to successfully execute this idea is what separates the dreamers from the entrepreneurs. However you see yourself, whatever your age may be, as soon as you make that exciting first hire, you have taken the first steps in becoming a powerful leader. When money is tight, stress levels are high, and the visions of instant success don’t happen like you thought, it’s easy to let those emotions get to you, and thereby your team. Take a breath, calm yourself down, and remind yourself of the leader you are and would like to become. Here are some key qualities that every good leader should possess, and learn to emphasize.

Ten Ways To Build Better Business Relationships

Ten Ways To Build Better Business Relationships: In the current issue of Family Business, my former colleague Jayne A. Pearl has a wonderful article on The Emily Post Institute, which is, in Jayne’s words still “defining propriety for the masses.”

The #1 Reason Leadership Development Fails

The #1 Reason Leadership Development Fails: Over the years, I’ve observed just about every type of leadership development program on the planet. And the sad thing is, most of them don’t even come close to accomplishing what they were designed to do – build better leaders. In today’s column I’ll share the #1 reason leadership development programs fail, and give you 20 things to focus on to ensure yours doesn’t become another casualty.

6 Tips to a Successful Mentorship

6 Tips to a Successful Mentorship: The business world is brutal, rewarding, difficult, exciting, and can pretty much be considered a rollercoaster of emotions.  Having someone to coach you through it and guide you through the maze of challenges is extremely valuable. I?ve been fortunate to have some amazing mentors in my life, and equally as fortunate to mentor some other leaders. Here are some tips that can lead to a successful mentorship relationship.

Three Steps for Overcoming Passive Resistance

Three Steps for Overcoming Passive Resistance: People can be extremely indirect in how they resist change. Not long ago I observed the executive team of a global media company reviewing strategic projects that had been initiated by a new CEO. The projects were intended to better leverage the corporate "center" through common processes, sharing of best practices, talent swapping, and the like. Although these made perfect strategic sense, the business unit leaders perceived the shifts as a potential loss of autonomy, power, and control. But rather than expressing this discomfort explicitly, they verbally supported the CEO and found more subtle ways to resist.

14 Ways To Be Better At Your Job In 2013

14 Ways To Be Better At Your Job In 2013: With a new year approaching, many people have an “out with the old and in with the new” mentality—and work is usually a big part of that, says corporate veteran and author Andy Teach.

4 Ways To Improve Your Hiring Process

4 Ways To Improve Your Hiring Process: When I was a corporate executive in the area of strategic planning, I quickly learned a very important lesson – the best way to ensure strategy implementation is to hire the right people into the company.

5 Ways to Lead a Meeting: Make 30 Decisions in 30 Minutes

5 Ways to Lead a Meeting: Make 30 Decisions in 30 Minutes: Time is our most precious asset, yet many don’t know how to manage or value it. The workplace demands that we multi-task; employees lose focus and become disorganized, making it difficult to make good decisions and build momentum. Meetings at work have become a commodity – we have too many of them that are not adding substantive value. As such, meetings are losing their impact, becoming distractions and forums for political maneuvering. It’s time to rethink how leaders can maximize engagement and their opportunities when people are asked to come together as one.

5 Trends Defining the World of Work and Leadership in 2013

5 Trends Defining the World of Work and Leadership in 2013: Grab a glass of eggnog and let’s settle down to speculate about which trends will drive the world of leadership and work in 2013. Sure, everyone’s prognosticating at this time of year, while also reflecting back on what they expected of 2012 – what happened, and where their spidey-sense came up short. So why not me?

How to Hire Key Players (Video)

How to Hire Key Players (Video): Oliver Guinness, an investor, says you should figure out your hiring needs in advance -- and look for people who are smarter than you.

Ego and Business: 6 Famous Failures, and 4 Easy Steps to Keep your Own Ego in Check

Ego and Business: 6 Famous Failures, and 4 Easy Steps to Keep your Own Ego in Check:

“There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry”  General George Armstrong Custer, 1876     --Game, Set and Match: Sitting Bull My 3 Favorite People: Me, Myself and I

  How much does ego cost your company? How about your career? A noted career psychologist says

How to Be a Great Leader in a Time of Change

How to Be a Great Leader in a Time of Change: What makes a great leader? Erika Andersen – fellow Forbes contributor and author of Leading So People Will Follow – says we have an almost instinctive knowledge, thanks to thousands of years of evolution. “For most of history, who you chose as a leader was a life-and-death decision,” she says. “That’s deep wiring, and it’s not going to change in a couple hundred years.” The secret to recognizing these true leaders has been encoded in the heroic fairy tales that have been passed down, she says, and are just as true for contemporary business leaders as they were for medieval princes. “Leadership tales exist all around the world, and tell you what to look for in a good leader. They have important information embedded in them.”

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o: The 5 Steps to Authentic Leadership

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o: The 5 Steps to Authentic Leadership: My mother was rabidly Irish and my father rabidly Catholic so it was perhaps inevitable that as a boy I would rabidly root for Notre Dame. Over the years I've lost most of my taste for football, but Notre Dame’s remarkable success this year triggered some left over nostalgia that I didn't know I had. In fact, I recently found myself rooting around the web just trying to find out how Notre Dame first got its sobriquet the Fighting Irish. I never did find out, but I stumbled instead on this interview with Notre Dame’s star defense-man  Manti Te’o. Anything but a typical “jock piece,” Te’o movingly describes the prayer that eventually sent a young Mormon man with a lifelong dream of playing for Southern Cal to Catholic Notre Dame instead. But more impressive still, is his description of the mid-season death of the young woman he loved and the wisdom he learned from her. Before every game, for example, his girlfriend would write a note from her hospital bed urging him to always be “humble.” And if the tone of his interview is any indication, then this remarkable young man has taken her lessons to heart.

From Customer Management to Customer Engagement

From Customer Management to Customer Engagement: Empower your People and Reap the Rewards

How To Overcome Workplace Distraction

How To Overcome Workplace Distraction: Everyone knows how distracting life at the office has become. Midday yesterday I slacked off on my email and I now have 102 unread messages. The red light on my desktop phone is blazing, telling me I have voicemail waiting. There are two projects I should be doing, including one that involves compiling many disparate pieces of information and interviewing several business school professors. Then there are the personal tasks that compete for my attention, including a stack of health insurance papers I should file. And I don’t even sit in an open-plan office, as most workers do these days. I can shut my door.

How To Make Year-End Performance Appraisals A Constructive, Not Demotivating, Event

How To Make Year-End Performance Appraisals A Constructive, Not Demotivating, Event: It's that time of year again.  The time in the business world where managers and employees face, often with anxiety, year-end performance appraisals.  The managerial challenge?  How to make these evaluations a candid and constructive but not demotivating event.

Efficiently Yours: Six Secrets to Email Mastery

Efficiently Yours: Six Secrets to Email Mastery: One of our biggest time wasters only came into use by most people within the last ten years - fifteen years for certain office workers, twenty for a few professionals in high tech, and a little before that for hard-core computer geeks and academics. Email is far too new a tool for most people to fully recognize the stranglehold it has on productivity.

Flourish As An Influential Leader - Think Like A Negotiator

Flourish As An Influential Leader - Think Like A Negotiator: What do employee reviews, vendor selection, venture funding, and project planning all have in common? They all involve persuasion and negotiation. Although most business interaction is not formally labeled as a negotiation, communication in the workplace is most often used to reach an understanding, resolve differences, or produce an agreement on a course of action—these are, by very definition, the goals of a negotiation. As a leader, it is essential to your success to use the skills and mindset of a negotiator.

11 Ways to Eliminate Average

11 Ways to Eliminate Average: At a dangerously high rate, our society is inundated with average - average customer service, average response time, average intelligence, average cleanliness, average taste, average design, average technology, average sales pitch, average pair of jeans, average relationship, average conference room, average everything. When I stop to think about it, I am simply overwhelmed by the amount of mediocrity I see everywhere I go. The most frustrating part has nothing to do with the fact that the service, experience or item was less-than-stellar; rather it’s the notion that the ordinary, ho-hum version could swiftly be improved, to become extraordinary.

16 Quick Tips To Become A Better Networker

16 Quick Tips To Become A Better Networker: Six degrees of separation are allegedly all that stand between you and anyone on the planet.  Or, according to my father, “There are not six degrees of separation, there are two; you just have to think hard enough.”

5 Habits of Highly Effective Communicators

5 Habits of Highly Effective Communicators: It's no secret that good leaders are also good communicators.  And the best leaders have learned that effective communication is as much about authenticity as the words they speak and write.

3 Questions That Will Make You Better In Business And Your Career

3 Questions That Will Make You Better In Business And Your Career: After helping a client prepare for a major presentation in front of a large crowd at an industry meeting, we sat down to discuss how it went. She immediately turned to me and said, “How did I do? Is there anything I could have done better?”

3 Ways Employers Can Get More By Demanding Less

3 Ways Employers Can Get More By Demanding Less:
Sound impossible? Below are three ways changing workplaces are becoming more productive and less stressful, all at the same time.

Empower Your Employees

Empower Your Employees: Learn how WestJet increases customer loyalty by making every employee the “CEO of the Moment”

5 Ways to Identify Prospective Leaders

5 Ways to Identify Prospective Leaders: As organizations assess their talent requirements to lead and execute their 2013 plans, many factors contribute to the evaluation process of an employee?s capabilities and know-how.   Corporations use a variety of different metrics to define an employee?s potential and succession plans to project ones future contributions and impact.  Beyond standardized tools that are used to identify and discover an organization?s ?bench strength? and future leaders, there exist a set of critical behaviors and disciplines that one must possess to advance as a leader.  Unfortunately, too many times scorecards are evaluated rather than the person themselves.

How to Communicate Effectively at Work

How to Communicate Effectively at Work
First, be crisp, clear and concise...

5 Mentors Everyone Should Have

5 Mentors Everyone Should Have: Having these types of people around to ask advice of and bounce ideas off can be essential to business owner's success.

How to Expect the Unexpected

How to Expect the Unexpected: Have you ever worked on a project that produced unexpected results? Unintended consequences are common in business. For example, sometimes when a senior manager makes a request, it causes a cascade of activity that is far beyond what she intended. The classic story (which may be an urban legend) involves a former Chairman of General Motors who casually commented to a staff member that he didn't like the color of the buildings on campus — and inadvertently triggered an expensive (and totally unnecessary) repainting program.

Cultivating Leaders at All Levels of an Organization - A Field Report

Cultivating Leaders at All Levels of an Organization - A Field Report: At Kotter International, our guiding mission is “millions leading, billions benefiting.”

How Do You Measure Your Own Performance?

How Do You Measure Your Own Performance?: Award-winning business owners reveal how they keep themselves on track ...

Personal Branding in the Future Workplace: A Crucial Skill for Employees and Recruiters Alike

Personal Branding in the Future Workplace: A Crucial Skill for Employees and Recruiters Alike: If you are planning to interview applicants next year at your company, here’s an important question: Would you rather hire someone with a high IQ or a high Klout score?

How Do I Go From Being An Idea/Vision Person To An Idea And Execution Person?

How Do I Go From Being An Idea/Vision Person To An Idea And Execution Person?:
Take out your list or little black notebook of ideas. You don't have one? And you're (supposedly) an ideas/vision guy? Fine, start one. Choose the smallest one...

The Art of Taking Advice: It Isn't What You Ask, It's Whom You Ask

The Art of Taking Advice: It Isn't What You Ask, It's Whom You Ask: When considering who to seek advice from, consider the expertise, timing and motivation behind the words of wisdom.

5 Ways to Cut Communications Blunders

5 Ways to Cut Communications Blunders: Does everyone you work with in your start-up do the right thing all the time? I didn’t think so. I would like to interview 50 start-ups and ask them to describe how often people do the wrong thing and how much that costs their start-ups.

Transparency Is The Key To Leadership

Transparency Is The Key To Leadership: I love mornings. The world is quiet, my coffee is hot, and optimism is in the air.

If Walls Could Talk at TechStars

If Walls Could Talk at TechStars: Sometimes mentors can feel like a broken record at business accelerators, doling out the same advice over and over...

3 Steps To Cure Job Stress In Time For Your Next Coffee Break

3 Steps To Cure Job Stress In Time For Your Next Coffee Break: When it comes to their working life, the level of on-the-job stress is the aspect that Americans are most dissatisfied with, according to a recent Gallup poll. Another survey from Harris Interactive found that three-quarters of us are feeling tense about our jobs, with factors such as bad bosses, annoying colleagues and inadequate salaries leading the list of woes.

Dealing with a Problem Employee? 3 Questions to Ask Yourself

Dealing with a Problem Employee? 3 Questions to Ask Yourself: If you are a manager, you have a problem child. You know who I’m talking about—she makes you roll your eyes when someone asks how work is going. You should just fire her already. You could get so much more done if she wasn’t there. Right?

5 ways to keep employees excited

5 ways to keep employees excited: Get employees invested in your firm, then eliminate bad bosses and red tape.

How to Give Feedback

How to Give Feedback: Not all criticism is constructive—and your opinions won’t be taken seriously if you’re more insulting than you are instructive. Here’s how to make changes without making enemies or scenes.

9 Things A Boss Should Never Say To An Employee

9 Things A Boss Should Never Say To An Employee:

There’s been a fair amount of discussion recently in the media on the worst communication mistakes employees make, and the negative comments employees should never say to a boss. This week, I’d like to turn the tables. There are likewise expressions a manager should never proclaim to an employee.

Getting Your Employees To Show Up

Getting Your Employees To Show Up: Curbing employee absenteeism begins with a smart policy approach. Here are 5 keys to get you started

Don't Innovate. Create a Culture of Innovation

Create a Culture of Innovation: While many organizations focus on addressing problems, the most successful focus on raising the bar. One of the ways they do this is by creating a culture where innovation thrives. When this organizational strength is magnified, it can become a source of competitive advantage.

How To Correlate The Skills You NEED With The Skills Your Company VALUES Most

How To Correlate The Skills You NEED With The Skills Your Company VALUES Most: What are the critical issues? If the answers were clear, every organization would likely change.  There are literally thousands of variables that leave leaders baffled as they sift through the clutter of needs and options to decide what is crucial. Most organizations are not able to fix everything; therefore, they need to prioritize the capabilities that if changed, would have the greatest impact on the organization’s results.

The Best Way To Start Your Day

The Best Way To Start Your Day: Get your workday off to a productive start by modelling the habits of three proven entrepreneurs in Part 13 of Lessons From Leaders video series

How To Communicate Effectively At Work

How To Communicate Effectively At Work: The title of Karen Friedman’s latest book isn’t exactly subtle. Shut Up And Say Something: Business Communication Strategies to Overcome Challenges and Influence Listeners lays out her no-nonsense philosophy about how to best get your point across, drawn from her 37 years of experience as a professional communicator.

3 Leadership Tips for Creating Organic Change

3 Leadership Tips for Creating Organic Change: My colleagues and I have spoken at length on this blog about how hierarchy-driven change can create barriers to success.  Today, Dennis Goin explains how a light touch from leadership can yield outstanding results.

10 Free Tech Tools to Boost Your Productivity

10 Free Tech Tools to Boost Your Productivity: The best tech tools and software that won't cost a cent

Overcoming Fear: The 3 Step Process

Overcoming Fear: The 3 Step Process: Can you name the biggest impediment to innovation? One of our Fishbowl “Captains” – John Erickson– hit the nail on the head in a team discussion this week.

Six Simple Rules For Doing Better With Less

Six Simple Rules For Doing Better With Less: In 1997, when Steve Jobs came back to rescue Apple , he removed several thousand middle managers. He couldn’t see that they were doing anything useful for customers. Without those middle managers, Apple went from the brink of bankruptcy to the most valuable company on the planet. Apple demonstrated a central principle of radical management: by focusing energy on only those that added value to customers, and stopping doing things that didn’t, Apple did much, much better with less.

3 No-Fail Ways To Build Trust

3 No-Fail Ways To Build Trust: Try these confidence-building tips to engage your workforce

How To Be Seen As A Leader - At Any Point In Your Career

How To Be Seen As A Leader - At Any Point In Your Career: So you want to be seen as a leader? Do these 3 things every day.

The Top 6 Actions That Promote Career Success

The Top 6 Actions That Promote Career Success: Want more career success? It doesn't just fall in your lap - you have to take the right kind of action to move forward. Learn the top 6 actions that create more success and reward in your career.

One Question That Unlocks Explosive Growth

One Question That Unlocks Explosive Growth: Crayola transformed its business by answering this seemingly obvious question. Here’s how you can do the same

The Internal Interview: How to Nail an Interview at Your Current Company

The Internal Interview: How to Nail an Interview at Your Current Company: You’ve been thinking about making a lateral jump within your company, and you’ve had your eye out for marketing positions for months. Or, your boss knows you’ve been looking to switch into a more creative role, and she’s recommended you for an editorial position in another department. And now, you’ve found yourself with a new job interview—with your own company.

A Quiet Person's Guide To Effective Public Speaking

A Quiet Person's Guide To Effective Public Speaking: Three things I can say with certainty about public speaking:  1) Most normal people start off fearing it (slightly preferable to losing a limb).   2) It's one of the most valuable business/career skills you'll ever have.  And 3) it's a skill that most definitely can be learned.

4 Tested Time-Management Secrets

4 Tested Time-Management Secrets: Wasted time is wasted money. Use these proven strategies from top entrepreneurs for getting more done, in Part 11 in the Lessons From Leaders video series

Want To Keep Your Best People? Do This

Want To Keep Your Best People? Do This:

Treat your employees as trusted, valued partners - rather than as replaceable,  interchangeable parts.

This is a powerful idea. I've seen over the years that doing this is the one thing most likely to increase the probability that the best people in your organization will stay and thrive.

Here's how to do it:

How Business Champions Overcome Adversity: 5 Powerful Steps

How Business Champions Overcome Adversity: 5 Powerful Steps:

Starting and running a business can be extremely challenging. Most entrepreneurs and managers find new obstacles to remove and towering barriers to scale every day of the week. We often encounter disruptive situations in our personal and professional lives, such as a divorce, the death of a loved on, illness,

7 Surefire Ways To Boost Employee Productivity

7 Surefire Ways To Boost Employee Productivity: Maximize your return on human capital and increase output by improving in these seven key areas

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success: Tried-and-true negotiation tactics from author and negotiation expert Selena Rezvani.

How To Make A Strategy Succeed

How To Make A Strategy Succeed: This is the season when many organizations are planning and preparing for the year ahead and the years beyond. Strategic planning sessions and Executive Team retreats are in full swing, with teams developing programs and implementation plans that will, with the right approach, help direct their organizations mindfully and productively.

5 Steps To Managing Problem Employees

5 Steps To Managing Problem Employees: Survey finds business owners are spending too much time managing poor performers. Here's how to get them back on track in short order

The 10 (Hardest) Steps To Effective Delegation

Memo To Micro Managers: STOP! The 10 (Hardest) Steps To Effective Delegation: In my world as an investor, I find entrepreneurs who can’t let go of any task.  For various self-declared reasons, they alone can complete a given assignment.  Or even worse, they micro manage someone else’s work.  Sadly, this personality type frequently delegates a task to a subordinate only to quickly take it back.

10 Ways to Become Better at Your Job Today

10 Ways to Become Better at Your Job Today: With a sluggish economy, tepid hiring and continued stagnation in many workplaces, employees have a tough time feeling inspired to extend any extra effort . But if you can improve your job performance, you will put yourself in a good position to climb up the ladder should an opportunity materialize, or to move to a totally new job, in case you hear of an opening at another company.

6 Steps To Networking Like A Pro

6 Steps To Networking Like A Pro: This plan will keep you top of mind with event attendees long after the evening is over

The Productivity Improvement Steering Wheel: 7 Powerful Steps Every Leader Can Take

The Productivity Improvement Steering Wheel: 7 Powerful Steps Every Leader Can Take: The topic of productivity improvement has fascinated me for the biggest part of my life.  I recall reading as a young college student about a factory that continued functioning after all its employees went on strike.   The supervisors ran the plant quite successfully for a period of many weeks.  (My question was why they couldn’t continue doing that permanently if it worked well for a few weeks. I wasn’t thinking about maintenance and repair issues.)  But the fact of the matter in decades past was that many organizations simply had more people than they needed.

How The Most Sucessful People Use Feedback To Their Advantage

How The Most Sucessful People Use Feedback To Their Advantage:

What could be more natural you ask?

You take a small step toward your goal, of let’s say starting a company in your quest to find stabile employment.  Or maybe it is trying a different approach to solving that problem that is bugging you are work. And then you pause to see what you have learned from taking that step.  It is the most logical thing in the world, right?

Yes.  But speaking just for ourselves, we find it difficult because (at least upon occasion):           

Must-Have Job Skills in 2013

Must-Have Job Skills in 2013: For employees who want to get ahead, flexibility, productivity, communications skills and a strong personal brand will be essential.

10 Steps To Effective Listening

10 Steps To Effective Listening:

In today’s high-tech, high-speed, high-stress world, communication is more important then ever, yet we seem to devote less and less time to really listening to one another. Genuine listening has become a rare gift—the gift of time. It helps build relationships, solve problems, ensure understanding, resolve conflicts, and improve accuracy. At work, effective listening means fewer errors and less wasted time. At home, it helps develop resourceful, self-reliant kids who can solve their own problems. Listening builds friendships and careers. It saves money and marriages.

Here are 10 tips to help you develop effective listening skills:

Leadership 2.0: Are You An Adaptive Leader?

Leadership 2.0: Are You An Adaptive Leader?: One of the most popular Dilbert comic strips in the cartoon’s history begins with Dilbert’s boss relaying senior leadership’s explanation for the company’s low profits. In response to his boss, Dilbert asks incredulously, “So they’re saying that profits went up because of great leadership and down because of a weak economy?” To which Dilbert’s boss replies, “These meetings will go faster if you stop putting things in context.”

Delivering Difficult Feedback

Delivering Difficult Feedback: Four top entrepreneurs share how to tell someone they screwed up and not let the situation get ugly in Part 7 of Lessons From Leaders video series

How to Build a Network of Value

Chris Brogan on How to Build a Network of Value: It took Chris Brogan – an early adopter to the world of blogging – eight years to reach his first 100 subscribers. Since then, he’s become one of the most influential writers and speakers about social media and business. In his newly-released book The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?, co-authored with Julien Smith, he discusses how to make sure your ideas are heard in a crowded marketplace.

Time Management Secrets Anyone Can Use

Time Management Secrets Anyone Can Use
Having trouble focusing on what you really need to do? You're not alone. According to a survey by Salary.com, the average worker admits to wasting 2.09 hours of each eight-hour workday, not including lunch or scheduled breaks. The Web is like the next-door neighbor who keeps asking us to play when we know we have homework to do. Thankfully, there's an entire community of people who specialize in productivity and time management. Their guru is David Allen, author of the 2001 book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Others include Merlin Mann, founder of the blog 43 Folders, and the highly addictive Lifehacker.com. Here are some of their best ideas to help you declutter your life and make way for big, creative boosts of productivity:

The 7 Questions Great Delegators Ask

The 7 Questions Great Delegators Ask: Face the facts: You can't do everything. Learn how to enable others to do what needs to be done

How to Deal With Annoying Coworkers

How to Deal With Annoying Coworkers: We’ve all had coworkers who just rub us the wrong way. Maybe they have some annoying habit that gets under your skin. Maybe they don’t follow the same social “rules” you follow. Maybe they’re just different.

4 Ways For Leaders to Make a Decision

4 Ways For Leaders to Make a Decision: Business leaders are faced with dozens of decisions that need to be made every day. As our organizations grow, the decisions generally become more frequent, more complicated, and have more serious ramifications. Sometimes it’s not about making the right decision, but just making a decision at all. The most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders in the world will tell you they have made many wrong decisions throughout the lifetime of their careers, but those failures always lead to valuable learning experiences, so above all, it’s important to find ways to make the tough decisions.

4 Ways To Improve Your Business Networking

4 Ways To Improve Your Business Networking:
As small business owners and consultants, we understand the importance of networking. Your ability to schmooze, to meet people, and to create relationships will very often determine your success in business and how far you’re able to take your company. However, that doesn’t mean most of us are very good at it. We have a difficult time starting conversations and even keeping the relationships that we do start.
We could all be a little better.

Here are four tips to help increase your networking A-game:

Span Of Control - 5 Things Every Leader Should Know

Span Of Control - 5 Things Every Leader Should Know: Ask 5 people for their opinions on optimizing ?span of control? and you?ll likely receive 5 different opinions. These well meaning opinions will often cite a few different rules of thumb on size and composition, and will undoubtedly refer you to someone?s version of best practices. Here?s the problem ? they?ll all lead you astray.

First Rule of Management: No Whining

First Rule of Management: No Whining: One of my senior clients used to keep a "no whining" sign in her office. It seemed odd to have the sign so prominently displayed at a senior executive level. After all, the managers that walked into that office were not children, but mature adults with collective responsibility for thousands of employees. Why would they whine instead of just solving problems?

Performance Management Made Simple

Performance Management Made Simple: Four of Canada's top entrepreneurs offer their secrets for delivering employee feedback in Part 5 of the Lessons From Leaders video series

5 Most Effective Ways to Sell Change

5 Most Effective Ways to Sell Change: Change can scare a lot of people, but in today’s workplace – managing change is what keeps people relevant.    Being held accountable for managing change and making things better in your work is the new normal.   Knowing how to innovate and manage change will soon become a requirement in one’s job description and performance review.  Being responsible to generate results is one thing; knowing how to make the results more sustainable, profitable and multifaceted is another.   The new workplace requires everyone to lead and/or coordinate change in some shape or form – but very few have been formally trained to assure that it is effectively implemented.   This is the opportunity that everyone must learn to embrace!

How To Win Over Your Boss

How To Win Over Your Boss: You go through life trying to seek approval from your superiors. You constantly want to please your parents with good grades, impress your coaches on the field, and wow your professors in the classroom. And as an adult, you want to win over your boss at work.

The 30 Best Business Practices of All Time

The 30 Best Business Practices of All Time: Borrow the proven tactics of the most successful companies and executives from around the world and adopt them as your own

How to Deal With Favoritism in the Office

How to Deal With Favoritism in the Office: Do you have a colleague who is subject to special treatment while everyone else gets pushed aside? Are you the one praised incessantly by the boss, or the go-to person for all the great projects? It’s no secret that the playing field among workers isn’t level in most workplaces—and chances are you’ve been on one end of blatant favoritism at some point in your career.

5 Takeaways for Speakers, Leaders, and Followers

5 Takeaways from the Vice-Presidential Debate for Speakers, Leaders, and Followers: The Vice-Presidential debate was a lot more fun than the first Presidential one.  Both candidates came out swinging and got in some good punches.  Ryan was good on Afghanistan, on Obama as a speaker not a doer, and on the basic premise of the Republican campaign, that the economy isn’t getting better fast enough.  Biden was good on just about everything, once he got over his Gore-like tendency to create a sideshow of smiles, groans and eye-rolls when Ryan was talking.

How to Fire Someone

How to Fire Someone: Some ways to avoid making a bad situation even worse.

4 PR Habits of Highly Effective CEOs

4 PR Habits of Highly Effective CEOs: “There's none so blind as those that will not see” goes the old adage, and nowhere is this more true than boardrooms at budget season.

The Right Way to Be a Mentor

The Right Way to Be a Mentor: Every executive would love to have a great mentor looking out for them. But these days, they?re getting harder to find, as Harvard Business School professor Thomas DeLong explained in a recent Forbes interview. With professional demands increasing and many jobs requiring ?24/7? access, leaders frequently opt out of becoming mentors, choosing instead to focus on their own careers. Demetriouse Russell, a Harvard Business School graduate who now works at his alma mater as the Director of Corporate Relations and Market Development for HBS? Executive Education programs, is bucking the trend. Well known for his active mentorship (he was honored as a ?Living Legend? by the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School earlier this year), Russell credits his early upbringing in tough neighborhoods, including Chicago?s Cabrini-Green development, with helping him appreciate the importance of role models. ?There?s an intrinsic reward for me in helping others, because I was the beneficiary of mentors, teachers and coaches,? he says.

Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None Of These

Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None Of These:
There are four kinds of managers that I have seen and heard much about. They find their way into one small business or another and just help things unravel. Sometimes the owner brings them right through the front door, tucked behind their own personality...

3 Ways to Win the Workplace Game

3 Ways to Win the Workplace Game: Are you finding it more challenging to create and sustain momentum in your work?   In a global marketplace that demands more from people, the competitive landscape is fierce.   People are concerned about their futures and that of their children.  They are also increasingly becoming more nervous about “the here and now.”   As such, employees are looking to find ways to remain relevant so as to get discovered faster.   They are eager to stand out from the crowd with the hope of being sponsored by one of their senior executives.    Employees are becoming restless and are finding it difficult to wait for the next opportunity – and are thus realizing that they must create opportunities for themselves before time passes them by.

5 Ways to Amp Up Your Creativity

5 Ways to Amp Up Your Creativity: Whether you are in a brainstorming rut or feel too exhausted to muster up a germ of imagination, here are five action-oriented steps to propel you to the creativity big leagues:

The Secret of Productivity: How to Master Your Time

The Secret of Productivity: How to Master Your Time:
 The fact is that we have 168 hours of time per week. There is no such thing as a “lack of time.” We always find time to do the things we are most motivated to do. Our quality of life—our excellence in our field of work—is determined by how we manage those 168 hours.

 So, how can we master our time? We need to focus our brain on doing what is most important, and stop doing non-essential tasks. Everyone wants a “piece of our time”—and it’s typically in conflict with what we want to do....

8 Secrets To Accomplishing More Each Day

8 Secrets To Accomplishing More Each Day: Work smarter, not harder. Here’s how.

6 Powerful Ways to Embrace Change

6 Powerful Ways to Embrace Change: Most people are averse to change. They like to keep things the way they are; they like to stay in their comfort zone.

Work Is Easier When You’re Motivated

Work Is Easier When You’re Motivated:
Inspiration feels like catching a genie in a bottle — elusive and sometimes unreal. But when you tap into it for yourself, then you find a new kind of motivation...

10 Steps You Can Take To Become A Successful Young Leader At Work

10 Steps You Can Take To Become A Successful Young Leader At Work
Most people near the starts of their careers aren't typically thought of as leaders in the workplace. Not only do they inhabit a low spot in the office hierarchy and lack experience and skills, but also many are too timid and insecure to assume a leadership role. But with the right attitude, an observant eye and a desire to learn, any young professionals can prevail early on.

5 Steps to Smooth Networking

5 Steps to Smooth Networking: Networking is the heart and soul of all kinds of things in life, including job hunting, successful career change and building your own business. Here are five steps to becoming a great networker.

How to Turn Your Fear into Fuel

How to Turn Your Fear into Fuel: Three steps to make your entrepreneurial anxiety work for you.

10 Ways To Get Your Colleagues To Work With You Better

10 Ways To Get Your Colleagues To Work With You Better: One of the most important hiring criteria for many companies is the ability to work as a team player—yet, so many of us have colleagues who don’t play well with others.

The Simplest Way For Leaders To Gain Lasting Loyalty

The Simplest Way For Leaders To Gain Lasting Loyalty: This will be short because it's simple.  There are of course a number of ways for leaders to gain loyalty that involve variations around compensating your employees, running a sound ship and producing strong results for your organization.   These are all naturally true, but I'd argue there's one other method that's simpler and more fundamental and will serve you well in good economic times and bad:

How to Fire Someone

How to Fire Someone: Some ways to avoid making a bad situation even worse.

6 Ways To Be More Productive

6 Ways To Be More Productive: Robert C. Pozen is a very productive guy. At age 66, his résumé is so packed with accomplishments, it’s tough to cram them into a short summary. He has been a law firm partner, an executive at two different investment firms, and he has served various government stints, including associate general counsel at the SEC and secretary of economic affairs under then- Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Throughout his career he has taught, at Georgetown, NYU and most recently, Harvard Business School. Meantime, he has written numerous articles, including two pieces in Forbes I edited back in 2005 and 2009, and six books. His most recent, perhaps not surprisingly, is called Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.

Can You Succeed Like Apple By Following These 7 Rules?

Can You Succeed Like Apple By Following These 7 Rules?: Is there a secret design agenda that can bring you some of Apple's success? John Edson thinks so.

3 Lessons From Shark Tank on How to Make Your Business More Likable

3 Lessons From Shark Tank on How to Make Your Business More Likable: Are you likable? It could be the key to your business becoming more profitable.

6 Ways To Make A Team of Rivals Work

6 Ways To Make A Team of Rivals Work: When Barack Obama was asked how he’d build a successful government, he referenced one of his all-time favourite books: ‘Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln’. It describes how Lincoln appointed a cabinet of his three biggest rivals (who loathed him), and united them to win the Civil War. This, Obama said, was what he’d do – appoint the best person for the job, regardless of their affiliation, history or any personal grudge.

Seven Keys To Sales Leadership

Seven Keys To Sales Leadership: The sales leadership job is one of the toughest in business today. I have previously written about why this is so, but suffice it to say it is a few critical jobs rolled into one: super seller, coach, strategist and business leader. I have had the chance to work with thousands of sales leaders over the course of my career and have observed that the most successful among them possess key characteristics: the seven keys to being a great sales leader.

Great Ideas Bosses Never Hear

Great Ideas Bosses Never Hear: Employees have a lot to say, but their managers rarely hear it. How companies can benefit more from ideas that originate on the front lines.

Mass Persuasion

Mass Persuasion: “Successful entrepreneurs recommend reading this article about the persuasion techniques companies use to drive engagement.”

5 Leadership Lessons from JetBlue's President and CEO

5 Leadership Lessons from JetBlue's President and CEO: In a recent interview with Dave Barger, President and CEO of JetBlue, we discussed his personal interest in supporting education, how JetBlue views and integrates social responsibility and citizenship into their efforts, the evolving definition of business in society, and 5 leadership lessons he’s learned along the way.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Leadership Style

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Leadership Style: There are many leadership styles and a cottage industry has cropped up around defining them. Gayle Lantz, president of WorkMatters, Inc., a human resources consulting firm in Birmingham, Ala., uses the popular DISC assessment tool to as part of her practice to identify leadership styles.

PR Tips from the Pros: Katherine Barna, Tumblr's Head of PR

PR Tips from the Pros: Katherine Barna, Tumblr's Head of PR: This week, we’re bringing you even more PR advice from the pros—this time, straight from Katherine Barna, Head of PR at Tumblr. Check out our primer for using Tumblr to promote your brand, then read on for Barna’s expert tips for making the most of the social media platform.

10 Phrases That Are Holding Your Career Back

10 Phrases That Are Holding Your Career Back: Fillers and qualifiers and jargon, oh my! Get these weak and uncertain phrases out of your vocabulary.

Why Collaboration Is Key

Why Collaboration Is Key: Ideas are worthless until they're out of your head and in front of others.

The 10-Step Failure Challenge

The 10-Step Failure Challenge: When you're learning something new, whether its negotiation or hip hop, you go through several stages:

How To Run A Meeting

How To Run A Meeting: Dr. Nadine Katz goes to a lot of meetings. Some of them last so long the participants have to order in food or switch rooms.

Ways to Avoid Hovering Over Employees

Ways to Avoid Hovering Over Employees:
Regardless of the industry, entrepreneurs vary when it comes to leadership styles. Some employers prefer the traditional top-down approach, while others treat their employees like equals who can IM them throughout the day and grab drinks with them once that day is over. But altogether, teams are formulated at startups to create things, to get things done — without micromanaging...

The Top 5 Things Employees Want (and Need!) to Hear from Management

The Top 5 Things Employees Want (and Need!) to Hear from Management: Employees want good pay. They want to have some say in how they perform their jobs. They want to be treated fairly. And they want management to be consistent in word and deed. But if you really want a motivated, committed workforce, you?d better answer the five questions that every employee wants to know.

Three Tips for a Successful Debate or Presentation

Three Tips for a Successful Debate or Presentation: There is much anticipation surrounding this election season's first presidential debate. It's each candidate's opportunity to present their ideas to a wide audience and persuade viewers of their positions. Similarly in a business presentation, a presenter must win over the audience and clearly communicate his point of view in a way that causes the audience to take action.

Steps To Effective Change Management

Steps To Effective Change Management:
Change management is a complex process which varies according to each individual organization’s needs. There will be different approaches taken depending on a wide range of factors including the type of organisation, the change objectives and the external environment.

However, there are 5 fundamental steps which need to be part of any effective change management program...

5 Ways to Rock Star HR Leadership

5 Ways to Rock Star HR Leadership: One of the dirty little secrets of HR – Human Resources as a professional practice – is that it’s not always about the people and humanizing brands. Not really, anyway. Some HR professionals have more in common with the Governance, Risk and Control department of the enterprise. HR sometimes gets a bad rap for being more concerned with limiting risk to the corporation than it is with making sure the employees – people, everyone – are working well and that the company’s culture can sustain its people in a fast-paced business. As a talent management practitioner and speaker, I spend a lot of time on HR topics of course. I'm one too = a flavor of HR professional.

Great Leaders Don't Do It Alone...They Get Help

Great Leaders Don't Do It Alone...They Get Help: There's a model we all have in our heads, of the fearless, solitary leader: the John Wayne-like character out ahead of the pack, carving a path in lonely glory for others, less leaderlike, to follow.

Measuring Your Company Goals

Measuring Your Company Goals:
I’ve been making New Year’s Resolutions for my business for years. You could also call what I compile at the start of the year goals for my company. Rather than creating a stagnant business plan that I forget to update, I simply revisit what I want for my company at the fresh start of the year.
So why am I telling you this when New Year’s is so far away?
Because the rest of the year I measure my goals..

6 Steps for Creating a Game Changer

6 Steps for Creating a Game Changer:

At one time or another all great leaders experience something so big and so impactful it literally changes the landscape - it’s what I call a “Game Changer.” A game changer is that ah-ha moment where you see something others don’t. It’s the transformational magic that takes organizations from ordinary to

How to Detect Your Blind Spots That Make Your Colleagues Disrespect You

How to Detect Your Blind Spots That Make Your Colleagues Disrespect You: This article is by Sara Canaday, a career strategist and corporate speaker and author of  You—According to Them: Uncovering the Blind Spots That Impact Your Reputation and Your Career.

Four Things to Consider Before You Grow

Four Things to Consider Before You Grow: Every entrepreneur wants their business to grow. But rapid growth can quickly get out of hand if you don’t plan for it

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success: Tried-and-true negotiation tactics from author and negotiation expert Selena Rezvani.

3 Tips for Achieving Your Work/Life Balance

3 Tips for Achieving Your Work/Life Balance: “There isn’t a moment of the day when I’m not thinking about my business.” Does this sound familiar? Many entrepreneurs and business owners report that they work non-stop, day and night. Sure, it’s great for your business, but is it good for your life?

How To Address Challenging Team Members

Don’t Reward Bad Behavior – How To Address Challenging Team Members:
What happens when a co-worker or team member speaks in an aggressive or passive aggressive manner that tends to take over or misdirect your meetings and your projects? If you sit there in silence, it’s a passive way of condoning their message...

4 Steps To Painless (And Effective) Performance Evaluations

4 Steps To Painless (And Effective) Performance Evaluations: Conducting effective performance evaluations is like painting a room.  If you do all the prep work diligently - all the sanding, spackling, taping and priming - the actual painting is easy.   So too with employee evaluations.

Why You Need to Ask Questions About Your Culture

Why You Need to Ask Questions About Your Culture: Organizational culture powerfully influences a company's performance — or at least we say so. I often hear executives reassure me that projects will get done because "we have an execution culture," or that customers will be well taken care of because "we have a culture where the customer comes first." At the same time, culture is also one of the great rationalizations for managerial shortcomings. Many times I've heard that a project was delayed because "we don't make quick decisions around here," which is the managerial equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."

The Commitment Engine

The Commitment Engine: One of the most effective ways to build your team is to enlist your staff in the recruiting process. In The Commitment Engine, John Jantsch, a marketing and digital technology ...

Are You an Impactful Leader?

Are You an Impactful Leader?: This last weekend, the Empact100 took place at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where 100 of the most impactful entrepreneurs were recognized by the White House. There were some great speeches given by many people, including Jeff Hoffman, the co-founder of Priceline and Steve Case, the founder of AOL.

How to Respond to Negativity

How to Respond to Negativity: "I'm getting to the end of my patience," Dan,* the head of sales for a financial services firm, told me. "There is so much opportunity here — the business is growing, the work is interesting, and bonuses should be pretty good this year — but all I hear is complaining."

Leadership Truths That Every Leader Needs To Know

Leadership Truths That Every Leader Needs To Know:
Successful business leadership is about the ability to create a compelling vision that is backed up by strong values, a strong sense of purpose and that inspires other people to help you to achieve it. In order to do this it is essential that, as a leader, you create an environment where people are encouraged to work harmoniously together using their own unique talents and skills to achieve common goals.
It sounds fairly straightforward doesn’t it?

6 Ways Successful Teams Are Built To Last

6 Ways Successful Teams Are Built To Last: It takes great leadership to build great teams. Leaders  who are not  afraid to course correct, make the difficult decisions and establish standards of performance that are constantly  being met – and improving at all times.   Whether in the workplace, professional sports,  or your local community, team building requires a keen understanding of people, their strengths and what gets them excited to work with others.   Team building requires the management of egos and their constant demands for attention and recognition – not always warranted.   Team building is both an art and a science and the leader who can consistently build high performance teams is worth their weight in gold.

New To Leadership? If You Only Do One Thing, Do This

New To Leadership? If You Only Do One Thing, Do This: Yet another really interesting post from Glen Llopis, this one about what young leaders need to do to lead folks from older generations.  His four recommendations are: 1) Be an active listener and learner, 2) Get to know them on a personal level, 3) Embrace differences, 4) Earn respect by being less authoritative.

Market Research 101

Market Research 101: "Market analysis resources to help you target your best customers"

How Do You Persuade Others?

How Do You Persuade Others?: There is one book that everyone needs to know on why people do what they do.  It’s called Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini, and it is a classic.  Cialdini is professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University.  He doesn’t speak often about persuasion, but he has people approved to speak on the subject for him, so if you get a chance to hear a Cialdini clone, do so.

23 Leadership Tips From Oprah Winfrey

23 Leadership Tips From Oprah Winfrey: Oprah Winfrey is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of her generation. Raised by her grandmother in rural Mississippi until age six and then by her mother, who worked as a maid in Milwaukee, Ms. Winfrey was an unlikely candidate to become one of the most dominant media personalities of modern America.

Sparking Your Imagination

Sparking Your Imagination: "How to light your creative fire"

The Key to Changing Organizational Culture

The Key to Changing Organizational Culture: The Boston Globe just ran a front-page story in their "Ideas" section on organizational culture, inspired by some depressing events involving the Boston University hockey team. It was much more impactful than the average writing about culture, and raised the important question: Why do conversations about an important topic like culture typically go nowhere, leading companies to waste time and money with "cultural change efforts" which very seldom work?

The Top 5 Leadership Skills for Sustained Innovation

The Top 5 Leadership Skills for Sustained Innovation: Anyone can innovate once. All it takes is a good idea, some hard work, sufficient resources, and a little bit of luck.

Reaching Out To Departed Customers For Recovery

Reaching Out To Departed Customers For Recovery:

Every business has customers who have departed.  There are a variety of reasons that prompt departure. How you react to the departure will either validate that they left for a good reason or begin the process of bringing back that customer and that customer revenue.

Follow these five steps...

What It Really Takes To Be Inspiring

What It Really Takes To Be Inspiring: What are the top three traits of highly inspiring people, and what can we learn from them?

What's Your Best Business Advice?

What's Your Best Business Advice?: "A strong mantra separates a good business owner from a great one."

Management: Develop Your Emotional Quotient

Management: Develop Your Emotional Quotient:

Management has changed over the last couple of decades. The old 80’s style of management and motivating people by fear has evolved and today’s management is a much more supportive, encouraging, inclusive and altogether more effective form of directing and developing people.

5 Ways to Lead with Emotional Intelligence -- and Boost Productivity

5 Ways to Lead with Emotional Intelligence -- and Boost Productivity: Employees today are much more aware of whether or not they are a good fit in their workplace culture and they want their leaders to be more mindful of their needs.   In general, employees have become more sensitive about how to best co-exist in a workplace environment that allows them to be who they naturally are.   Employees are tired of playing games and just want to be themselves.  As such, they are managing their careers and looking to advance by searching for jobs that truly fuel their passion, fulfill their desires, and ignite their real talent.   For most, today’s economic landscape has made the career management journey extra challenging.  And beyond career advancement opportunities, people want their supervisors and leaders to be more in touch with who they are as people (not just as their colleagues) to assure that their career track is in proper alignment with and  supports their personal and professional goals.

How to be a Great Manager that Employees Want to Work With

How to be a Great Manager that Employees Want to Work With: I recently spoke to Jill Geisler, who is the author of Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know. Her companion “Great Bosses” podcasts  on iTunesU have been downloaded 8 million times – and counting. Jill heads the leadership and management faculty of the Poynter Institute. She teaches, writes and consults on critical issues for leaders and counts among her clients The Boston Globe, CNN, and the Washington Post. In recognition of her lifetime contributions to journalism, the University of Wisconsin honored her with its “Distinguished Service to Journalism” award, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association named her to its Broadcast Hall of Fame, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences inducted her into its prestigious Silver Circle.

Six Ways To Save Face When You Are Caught Unprepared

Six Ways To Save Face When You Are Caught Unprepared: Nearly 60% of readers who responded to my recent informal poll said the main reason that President Barack Obama flunked the first debate was that Mitt Romney was better prepared.

How to Win Over Someone Who Doesn't Like You

How to Win Over Someone Who Doesn't Like You: Does your co-worker scowl every time you walk by? Is that guy in your networking group consistently aloof? Sometimes, for no clear reason, someone may decide they dislike you – and if you want a more comfortable work environment, it’s up to you to change the dynamic. So what can you do to disarm a cranky colleague?

3 Ways to Become a Strategic Risk Taker

3 Ways to Become a Strategic Risk Taker: Some people are fundamentally risk-averse, by nature. Others seek risk out to the point of recklessness. Culturally, we tend to think of this first group as the wise ones, especially by contrast to the wild ones. They are the ones who stick with one job, one spouse and one set of super-slowly maturing blue chip stock market investments for a lifetime.

Meet Your Virtual Mentor

Meet Your Virtual Mentor: I met John Spence a few weeks ago. He was smart, funny, generous with his advice and encouraging.

Employee Survey Success: The 3 A's of Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Employee Survey Success: The 3 A's of Employee Satisfaction Surveys: The employee survey (i.e., employee satisfaction surveys) should form the backbone of any employee engagement initiative. In my book, Employee Engagement 2.0, I explain how the first step to improving anything is to measure it, and employee satisfaction and employee engagement are no different. But too often, despite a considerable investment in time and money, employee surveys fail to move the needle of engagement. For your survey to actually drive business results, you have to follow what I call the “three A’s of employee surveys.”

Leading the Unmanageable to Do Amazing Things

Leading the Unmanageable to Do Amazing Things: There was no way Chris Lin could survive inside the Coca-Cola culture. So, I gave him a two-year unbreakable consulting contract and invited him to be our voice of truth. One of the best choices I ever made.

5 ways to avoid burnout at work

5 ways to avoid burnout at work: Here are a few methods, from simple coffee breaks to Panamanian CEO retreats, to avoid work burnout and recharge your business.

The 3 Secrets to Conflict Resolution

The 3 Secrets to Conflict Resolution: Good leaders are great at resolving conflict. Great leaders keep conflict from arising in the first place. Here’s how they do it.

4 To-Dos for Your First Year on the Job

4 To-Dos for Your First Year on the Job: When I started my first job out of college (actually, while I was still in college), the idea of working someplace every day for an entire year was a bit terrifying. Although my course schedule was always full, and I’d worked during school as well, I’d never had to clock a full eight (ahem, 12) hours in a row—and of the hours I did put in, none were under the watchful eye of anyone but myself.

How to Make One Better Decision Each Day

How to Make One Better Decision Each Day: Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm and Handspring, spoke on campus at Stanford University in 2009. He said that whether you run a dry cleaner or a tech company, if you could just make one better decision each day, you would end up dominating your industry.

How to Become the Strategist Your Company Needs

How to Become the Strategist Your Company Needs: Cynthia Montgomery is the Timken Professor of Business Administration and immediate former head of the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, where she’s taught for twenty years. For the past six years, she has led the strategy track in the school’s highly regarded executive program for owner-managers, attended by business leaders of midsized companies from around the globe. She has received the Greenhill Award for her outstanding contributions to the Harvard Business School’s core MBA strategy course. Montgomery is a top-selling Harvard Business Review author, and her work has appeared in the Financial Times, American Economic Review and others. She has served on the boards of directors of two Fortune 500 companies and a number of mutual funds managed by BlackRock, Inc. Her new book is called The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs.

Become an Opportunity Maker With Others

Become an Opportunity Maker With Others: Years ago, a board member brought me into a corporation to lead a team in creating two products that he felt would boost the stock price. Here's how it happened. In my vigorous interview of him for The Wall Street Journal, he described how the firm could fall behind without them, and I became fascinated by their capacity to scale. He read my article.

39 Leadership Points to Ponder

39 Leadership Points to Ponder: Are you doing what's needed to lead your staff and business to success? Consider these hallmarks, benchmarks and best practices of effective leaders

The Right Way to Ask for Help at Work

The Right Way to Ask for Help at Work: I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point in my career, I started to believe “help” was a four-letter word. OK, well, it technically is, but you know what I mean. Somewhere, I had picked up the idea that asking for help was tantamount to admitting weakness, and ultimately, failure.

Successful but dissatisfied? How to change your mind, not your job

Successful but dissatisfied? How to change your mind, not your job: I recently had a conversation with a friend who?s looking for a new job. This individual is highly successful, well regarded and, apart from the usual hectic business life, has not much to complain about. He just feels like something?s not right. My friend is a classic example of a mid-career prisoner: successful but not satisfied. Trapped by his own success and his healthy pay, he feels unfulfilled and dissatisfied.  Actually, what he needs isn?t a change of job but a change of outlook.

How to turn a weakness into a strength

How to turn a weakness into a strength: Richard Branson on the proverbial lemons and lemonade

The One Talent That Makes Good Leaders Great

The One Talent That Makes Good Leaders Great: It is easy to spot leaders: They are the people others follow.

5 Leadership Takeaways From Michelle Obama

5 Leadership Takeaways From Michelle Obama: First Lady Michelle Obama has been actively in the news for two things. The first would be her fashion sense. But the second and most defining are her leadership skills and community activism.

Barbara Corcoran's Secrets to Success

Barbara Corcoran's Secrets to Success: At the 2012 World Business Forum, Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran shared the lessons that helped her business grow.

7 Sure-Fire Ways Great Leaders Inspire People To Follow Them

7 Sure-Fire Ways Great Leaders Inspire People To Follow Them: Twenty-five years ago Santa Clara University Professors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner wrote The Leadership Challenge, a primer on how to make extraordinary things happen in organizations by helping leaders perform their personal best. Two million copies have been sold and an updated version of the book has just been released. Since the book helped to frame my own ideas on leadership, it was a pleasure to sit down recently with both Kouzes and Posner to talk about a topic I consider the most relevant to this column: how leaders can communicate a vision that gets people excited about going to work each day.

How To Reward Employees On A Tight Budget

How To Reward Employees On A Tight Budget: The past few days I was working with a wonderful group – the senior Legal and Policy team of a client company – and we were talking about how to foster an environment where “employees are happy to come to work and can achieve their potential.”  Someone noted that’s harder when money's tight - when, for instance, you don’t have the budget to pay overtime or give significant raises.  Which led to a great conversation about what’s motivating to people.  We all agreed that money is great (it’s hard to imagine employees saying no to more money), but that you can reward and incent people in meaningful ways that don’t involve financial compensation.

Why Are They Leaving?

Why Are They Leaving?: 5 symptoms to help you diagnose the causes of employee turnover

When You Just Don't Fit In At The Office

When You Just Don't Fit In At The Office: Three and a half years ago Forbes merged its dot-com and magazine editorial staffs, and we magazine editors got a dose of culture shock. We were used to coming and going as we pleased. We had few meetings. Especially in the mid- and upper-level ranks, we didn’t socialize together much. Having moved here midway through my career, from a nightly television show where I was by necessity joined at the hip with my colleagues, I loved the independence and freedom of the place.

3 More Career Lessons From The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women

3 More Career Lessons From The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women: Michelle Obama. Nancy Pelosi. Marissa Mayer. Lady Gaga. The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women 2012 list names 100 very unique and powerful women who have made an impact on society. Although these women come from different backgrounds and lifestyles across the globe, they all have one thing in common: they have achieved great success.

5 Essential Lessons for First-Time Managers

5 Essential Lessons for First-Time Managers: Last April, I applied for an entry-level sales position at my current company. It wasn’t my dream job by any means, but at the time, I had just graduated from college and was employed at an advertising agency I was desperate to get out of.

The Four Things Young Leaders Must Do to Effectively Lead Older Generations

The Four Things Young Leaders Must Do to Effectively Lead Older Generations: When I first became a department manager at 25 years old, everyone on my staff was at least 10 years older than me.   Thankfully, my parents taught me as a young boy how to effectively communicate with older people.  The first 15 years of my career I was faced with leading older generations.  How could I earn the respect and get ?buy-in? from those who didn?t always enjoy getting direction from a leader who was (in some cases) as old as their own children?    Managing older generations at work requires patience, the ability to listen carefully, and the knowledge that you must learn the old ways of doing things before you can apply your new ideas.

PROFIT W100: Getting Started

PROFIT W100: Getting Started: How W100 leaders became involved in their businesses

3 Questions To Help You Align Company Culture With Core Values

3 Questions To Help You Align Company Culture With Core Values: While walking a potential investor through my first company’s office, he suddenly stopped to take a few deep breaths. I thought something was wrong until he told me, “I’ve never felt such powerful energy!” As a 21-year-old entrepreneur, I had taken our company culture for granted until that moment.

There are Four Types of Professionals When it Comes to Business Development. Which One Are You?

There are Four Types of Professionals When it Comes to Business Development. Which One Are You?: Bruce H. Rogers and Russ Alan Prince are the co-authors of the just published book Profitable Brilliance: How Professional Service Firms Become Thought Leaders now available on Amazon  http://amzn.to/OETmMz

How to Stay Responsive

How to Stay Responsive: Higher sales and better retention await those who resolve customer issues quickly. Here’s how to stay responsive as more people ask questions and air grievances via social media

21 Ways to Win at Public Speaking

21 Ways to Win at Public Speaking: Public speaking is an essential skill — not just for CEOs and Oscar winners — but for each and every one of us. Whether you are asked to give a toast at a wedding, say a few words at a birthday dinner, nail a sales presentation, or speak to the student body, might as well shoot for the stars.

5 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service

5 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service: The pace of technology is ever-quickening. Feel like your business is struggling to keep up? We do-- It’s no secret that the online marketplace and popularity of e-readers have forever changed our business of bookselling. Whenever we feel the push of technology, along with getting the push we need to learn something new, we remind ourselves to focus on what has always helped us to stand out—our customer service.

3 Easy Exercises to Boost Your Creativity

3 Easy Exercises to Boost Your Creativity: These strategies will help you think outside the box to discover your next business idea.

Are Your Employees Engaged?

Are Your Employees Engaged?:

Want to know how committed your employees are? The real test of employee engagement, says serial entrepreneur and author Kevin Kruse, is ?discretionary effort.? Connecting through the Miami airport last October, Kruse ? author of the new Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance saw it

To Find Your Next Great Business Idea, Narrow Your Focus

To Find Your Next Great Business Idea, Narrow Your Focus: A winning business opportunity often isn't obvious at first. Successful entrepreneurs can identify new niches and whether they can be profitable.

How To Be A Better Leader In Just 5 Days

How To Be A Better Leader In Just 5 Days: What if you could improve your leadership effectiveness in only 5 days? No really – what if? What if there were no costs, no strings attached, no hidden agendas, no complex curriculum, but just a simple set of instructions for you to follow over the next 5 days that will change your world as a leader? Well, I have a 5 day leadership challenge for you which will do just exactly that – You in?

The Six Secrets of Self-Control

The Six Secrets of Self-Control: What is it about self-control that makes it so difficult to rely on? Self-control is a skill we all possess (honest); yet we tend to give ourselves little credit for it. Self-control is so fleeting for most that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed two million people and asked them to rank order their strengths in 24 different skills, self-control ended up in the very bottom slot (for the record, self-control is a key component of emotional intelligence).

5 Tips For Employers To Earn Respect From Employees

5 Tips For Employers To Earn Respect From Employees: In a previous blog (R-E-S-P-E-C-T: How To Earn Respect At Work), I discussed ways employees can earn respect at work. But earning respect shouldn’t be a one-way street – it should also be embraced by employers. Respect isn’t just something subordinates are forced to give managers. It’s a valuable asset for employers to show and earn in the workplace. Earning employee respect isn’t always easy, but when employers find ways to build respect at work, positive benefits ensue. How do you build employee respect at work?

The Worst Way to Set Sales Targets

The Worst Way to Set Sales Targets: Here's why a popular method for setting sales quotas is a really bad idea—and how you should set them instead

7 Goals To Help Your Startup Craft A More Targeted PR Strategy

7 Goals To Help Your Startup Craft A More Targeted PR Strategy: It feels great to be covered by the media, but unless there's a business goal for getting press, it often doesn’t lead to any useful outcome -- aside from allaying your parents' fears that you don’t have a real job.

A Simple Way to Get Any Point Across

A Simple Way to Get Any Point Across: This article is by Deborah Grayson Riegel, president of Elevated Training Inc., a communication skills training and coaching company. She is the author of Oy Vey! Isn’t a Strategy: 25 Solutions for Personal and Professional Success.

Driving Change Without Rocking the Boat

Driving Change Without Rocking the Boat: Whether promoted from within or recruited from without, executives in new roles had better be ready to drive change.The tricky part: knowing what to change--and how much.

Seven Keys to Adjusting to a New Boss

Seven Keys to Adjusting to a New Boss: Imation CFO Paul Zeller knows a thing or two about surviving in a cutthroat corporate world. Four different CEOs have come and gone since he has been CFO. The current CEO changed out every single person on the leadership team except Zeller. When I interviewed Zeller for my earlier article on Imation’s M&A tactics, I asked him how he survived.

CFO at 28: Career Advice from a Seasoned Professional

CFO at 28: Career Advice from a Seasoned Professional: For the inaugural “CFO Insights” column, I spoke with Ben Mulling, CMA, CPA.CITP, CFO at TENTE Casters Inc. and member of the IMA Global Board of Directors who earned his title of CFO at age 28. We discussed the increasingly strategic role accounting and finance professionals are asked to perform and the skills necessary to advance in the profession. For more advice on how to succeed in today’s marketplace, watch the extended video interview below.

What’s Your Endgame?

What’s Your Endgame?: Without purpose, you cannot build a business; you can only make a living. And that will have massive implications by the time it comes to sell

3 Ways to Operationalize the Extra Mile

3 Ways to Operationalize the Extra Mile: Stephanie Burns is the founder and co-owner of Chic CEO ? a free resource for female entrepreneurs. You can follow her on Twitter at @ChicCEO.

14 Things You Should Do at the Start of Every Work Day

14 Things You Should Do at the Start of Every Work Day: The first few hours of the work day can have a significant effect on your level of productivity over the following eight—so it’s important you have a morning routine that sets you up for success.

15 Surefire Ways To Please Customers

15 Surefire Ways To Please Customers: You have one way to grow: surround your customers with value. Here's how.

Everyone Likes a Compliment

Everyone Likes a Compliment: Moving people to action — whether large groups of people, or just one individual — is at the core of a professional communicator’s responsibilities.  

A Leadership Job Description

A Leadership Job Description:

When was the last time you read a leadership job description? We have job descriptions for every position under the sun, but I’ve yet to see one for leaders. Virtually every job description you’ll read lists “leadership ability” as a quality/characteristic/attribute that is valued, and in fact, most list it

Fifteen ways to keep startup staff happy

Fifteen ways to keep startup staff happy: What’s the secret for keeping employees at startups motivated? Here’s how 15 entrepreneurs respond

How To Turn Setbacks Into Business Breakthroughs

How To Turn Setbacks Into Business Breakthroughs: Everyone knows the saying, “When life gives you lemons, then make lemonade,” but have you heard anyone explain exactly how to make the delicious lemonade from such a sour lemon?

Advice on Company Building from Ben Horowitz

Advice on Company Building from Ben Horowitz: At TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Ben Horowitz of Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz was interview by Bill Campbell of Intuit, himself another giant of Silicon Valley. Ben Horowitz's blog is fantastic source of advice about scaling and running a company, especially in the enterprise space; I've been following it since he started writing. I wanted to share some of the advice and lessons that were brought up during the conversation on stage.

Five tips to delegate more effectively

Five tips to delegate more effectively: As your business grows, letting go of certain responsibilities and assigning them to others becomes a critical skill. Approaching it correctly may be harder than you think

Five Challenges For Tomorrow's Global Marketing Leaders: Study

Five Challenges For Tomorrow's Global Marketing Leaders: Study: This article is by Freddie Laker, VP of global marketing strategy, and Hilding Anderson, research and insights director, both at SapientNitro.

Want to Change the World? Define Your Organization's Attitude

Want to Change the World? Define Your Organization's Attitude: Successful organizations like Apple, Coca-Cola, the Red Cross and Ritz-Carlton all have a distinct attitude. For example, Apple leads its competitors in designing innovative products. Winning attitudes do not emerge by chance. Leaders aligning their organization?s strategy, posture and culture create them.
Attitude Defined
The components of an organization?s attitude include strategy, posture and culture. As examples, look at Apple, Coca-Cola, the Red Cross and Ritz-Carlton:

How to Triple Profitability

How to Triple Profitability: Research shows these five drivers of employee engagement are key to bottom-line success

How to Build a Competitive Talent Advantage

How to Build a Competitive Talent Advantage: How can your company attract and retain the best employees? Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation, says it’s crucial to recognize upfront that “our career model is hopelessly dated.” In many ways, the corporate world is still stuck in the 1960s and 1970s, she says, but both the demographics and the needs of the workforce have changed dramatically. So what are the most successful companies doing?

3 Things You Can Do To Change People's Behavior

3 Things You Can Do To Change People's Behavior: Getting people (yourself included) to change the way they act is tough. Here's how to do it.

What to Do With a Workplace Whiner

What to Do With a Workplace Whiner: Toiling alongside a chronic complainer can lower productivity and morale. Here's how to cope.

Picking a Corporate Leader: The Crucial Question Almost No One Asks

Picking a Corporate Leader: The Crucial Question Almost No One Asks: This article is by Gautam Mukunda, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and author of the forthcoming Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2012).

Adjusting to a New Manager? Try Putting Yourself in Her Shoes

Adjusting to a New Manager? Try Putting Yourself in Her Shoes: There’s an old saying that goes, “Great managers are made, not born.” OK, maybe the original refers to “great leaders,” but it applies to managers, too.

7 deadly sins of business growth

7 deadly sins of business growth: There are several underlying issues that make growing your company completely different from everything else you do in your business. But there's hope.

How to Get a Raise, From 4 Women Who Got One

How to Get a Raise, From 4 Women Who Got One: We’re told over and over again that women are too reticent, too lacking in confidence, too timid to ask for a raise.

5 Things Failure Teaches You About Leadership

5 Things Failure Teaches You About Leadership: As you reflect upon your career and future, step-back and assess your body of work and how it has impacted the manner in which you lead.    What makes you a stronger leader and provides you the perspective to cast a greater vision and help others achieve more?  It is the wisdom embedded within your failures.   Understandably, most people would rather not talk about their failures, but it sure does teach one how to manage adversity; for example, to understand why certain dots didn?t connect in their career, or why certain relationships or opportunities went awry.