ChrisBanescu.com

by Tony Schwartz – The way most of us work isn’t working. Study after study has shown that companies are experiencing a crisis in employee engagement. A 2007 Towers Perrin survey of nearly 90,000 employees worldwide, for instance, found that only 21% felt fully engaged at work and nearly 40% were disenchanted or disengaged. That [...]

by Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. – How and why do incompetent people rise to the top? Why are there so many incompetent leaders? Is your boss less than competent? How about that department head in accounting or HR that doesn’t know his/her job? How in the world do incompetent people rise to the top in [...]

by Roger Martin – In my latest book, Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, I wrote about the negative impact of executive stock-based compensation on corporate short-termism. Eliminating stock-based compensation would help reduce the incentive for executive leadership to focus on the short term. But there is a [...]

by Ben Schiller – Post-financial meltdown, business schools are trying to make their graduates more responsible. But does taking one class on ethics work, or does a new ethical model need to permeate the curriculum? Many industry watchers saw business schools as contributing factors in the financial crisis, arguing that, by failing to challenge orthodoxies, [...]

by Amy Gallo – Everyone complains about his or her boss from time to time. In fact, some consider it a national workplace pastime. But there’s a difference between everyday griping and stressful frustration, just as there is a clear distinction between a manager with a few flaws and one who is incompetent. Dealing with [...]

by Gary Jason – The failure of the American K-12 public school system has been obvious for decades. Some of us fossils can recall the public uproar that accompanied the release of the report “A Nation at Risk” back in 1987, documenting the mediocre at best, disastrously bad at worst performance of the nation’s public [...]

by Bruce Brown and Scott D. Anthony – Back in 2000 the prospects for Procter & Gamble’s Tide, the biggest brand in the company’s fabric and household care division, seemed limited. The laundry detergent had been around for more than 50 years and still dominated its core markets, but it was no longer growing fast [...]

by Michael Hyatt – About once a week I get an email from someone who wants to know how to work for a bad leader. Maybe their boss is a jerk. Maybe he is just incompetent. Regardless, they are not quite sure how to lead well in this kind of situation. Though I eventually became [...]

If you’re new to negotiating or find it difficult, here are some missteps to avoid.

by Rich Karlgaard – (Note: Last week I sat down with Intel’s Paul Otellini to talk about technology in the 2-to-5-year future. Can Moore’s Law continue? What will smartphones, tablets and PCs look like in two years? I will publish our conversation in the March 14 issue of Forbes magazine. Meanwhile, enjoy Otellini’s riff on [...]

by Jason Fried – When one of our products malfunctioned, thousands of stranded customers erupted in fury. Yet we came out of the crisis more credible than ever. Here’s what we did. It was a really lousy week. One of 37signals’s key products is Campfire, a real-time chat tool for small businesses. For about a [...]

Creativity fosters innovation, but how can you ignite creative sparks within your organization? Inc.com compiled lessons on developing a vibrant research and development strategy. To come up with their best new ideas, most companies turn to an inexpensive and efficient source of innovation: their own employees. How can you unleash the creative spirit lurking in [...]

11/19/2010 – Davia Temin – Evil in the office. If you think about it, you’ll probably realize you’ve seen it play out at least once in your career. All of a sudden a well-running, friendly, effective group or company begins to disintegrate for no apparent reason. People start to become demoralized and dysfunctional, efficiency plummets, [...]

11/19/2010 – Paul Spiegelman – Paul Spiegelman, the founder and CEO of Beryl, a call-center company in Bedford, Texas, has built a unique, people-centric culture, which he chronicled in the book, Why is Everyone Smiling? His next book, co-authored with Beryl employees, is titled Smile Guide: Employee Perspectives on Culture, Loyalty and Profit. Here, Spiegelman [...]

8/8/2010 – Shawn Graham – For most of my adult life, I was incredibly easy to read. I wore my heart, and most of my facial expressions, on my sleeve. On occasion, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Other times, such as in my high school English class where the teacher threw note cards at [...]

7/29/2010 – Christine M. Riordan – Micromanage. A dreaded word. The dictionary defines it as “to direct or control in a detailed, often meddlesome manner.” Most popular management books call it something to avoid at all costs and give decisive tips on how not to do it. As a professor of management, I often talk [...]

7/9/2010 – Liz Ryan – Reigns of modest but palpable terror are making an unwelcome return at offices all over the country The U.S. financial crisis has caused fear in the boardroom, and that unease trickles down to every worker. The principal signs of a fear-soaked senior leadership are a preoccupation with looking out for [...]

6/17/2010 – Christopher Steiner and Brett Nelson – Entrepreneurs can’t completely inoculate their businesses from the vagaries of the market. What they can do is wrestle with the fundamental questions that govern the fate of any enterprise. We’ve done our best to compile the 20 most important ones. Digging for those answers is a grueling [...]

6/1/2010 – Gregory Ferenstein – The funny thing about business books is that for many stories, there are countless counterexamples of management philosophies that are radically different, yet still successful. What is inspiring about Zappos.com, the world’s largest online shoe retailer, is that it is possible for a business to be founded on curiosity, built [...]

5/26/2010 – Eileen Gittins – How entrepreneurs can turn what they love doing into successful businesses. Most people think about their jobs as the thing they do, instead of the thing they get to do. When you can build a culture where people feel privileged instead of entitled, that’s magic. And that’s what the best [...]

5/4/2010 – George J. Dennis – My company, TV Ears, specializes in sound. We manufacture TV listening products that have helped more than one million people hear the television more clearly. The idea came about after I tried to find something for my dad that would help him hear the TV. Nothing helped, so I [...]

Forbes.com | by Helen Coster and Tara Weiss | 3/31/2010 For most people, juggling the demands of a career and a personal life is an ongoing challenge, especially at a time when many companies have slashed their ranks —and expect more from the survivors. Achieving the elusive “work-life balance” can often feel like an impossible [...]

Inc.com | by Joel Spolsky | 2/1/2010 Have you ever invited employees to a meeting just so they wouldn’t feel left out? If so, you may be an overcommunicator. When was the last time you scheduled a meeting and invited eight people instead of the three people who really needed to be there simply because [...]

Inc.com | As told to Liz Welch | 12/1/2009 Former supermodel Kathy Ireland founded a little company to make products for “busy moms” like herself. Now, with revenue of $1.4 billion, she’s busier than ever. When she was in her 20s and a model, Kathy Ireland says, her job description was “Shut up and pose.” [...]

Forbes.com | by C. Caspar, A. Dias, H. Elstrodt | 1/15/2010 The keys to long-term success are professional management and keeping the family committed to and capable of carrying on as the owner. Family businesses are an often overlooked form of ownership. Yet they are all around us–from neighborhood mom-and-pop stores and the millions of [...]