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Excerpt: What makes one person more ambitious than the next? Is it social factors – upbringing, class, cultural influences, or is it primal – genetically fixed with some kind of temperamental determinism? And is a trait like ambition absolute and unwavering, or is it something more fluid, that is, once dormant, if can be unleashed with the right trigger? This Time feature finds out. What I find interesting is how an over-exercise of ambitions can lead to not only extreme stress, but cheating and other moral transgressions. Cheating was common, and most students shrugged it off as only a minor problem. A number of…
From the category archives:
Work & Entrepreneurship
The majority of prostitutes working in wealthier European countries come from board, particularly those from former Soviet countries. Free movement of labour, high pay, more lax rules on prostitution, more protection for the ladies, ensure those markets are well-supplied. What attracts knowledge migrants, blue-collar labourers, have the pull on prostitutes. In Britain, here’s where they come from:
1. Romania (3 in 2006) (12% of migrant total) 2. Russia (1) (9%) 3. Bulgaria (4) (8%) 4. Ukraine (2); Nigeria (5) (7%) 6. Brazil (8) (5%) 7. Belarus (7); Moldova; Poland (6); Hungary; Thailand (9) (4%)
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Excerpt: I’m pretty sure the corporate world did not discover the strength of introverted leaders just now, if you consider the myriads of virtues exhibited by those mystical introverts eloquently teased out in this Forbes article. But it is possible that after the sometime dazzling but on a whole, hugely disappointing decade we’ve been handed by the last crop of business leaders, people are on the look out for a new model. So are we ready for a new breed of corporate leadership? The thoughtful, silent, wise and stoic type? I’m reminded of Jonathan Rauch’s excellent essay on introverts. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented…
What to say to friends that are unemployed or laid off? Stay home and learn, and when you get tired of that, go look for jobs. Occasionally, talk to people: open up, ask for help, and be grateful when you get it.
Amber Johnson from forwarded me this link that features scientifically proven ways to get smart. It includes watching specific types of TV shows that have many overlapping stories, a large cast, moral and plot ambiguities. More obvious suggestions include: learning a foreign language, sleep, listen to music.
Recommendations such as crossword puzzles, chess, and other memory stretching activities are perhaps also equally beneficial for those fighting to stay lucid in old age.
Some surprising ones: playing video games, riding a motorcycle, benefits of aging (our brains reach peak efficiency around 40?), and transcendental meditation.
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Excerpt: For a lot of us, the decision of what course or specialty to follow usually got made when we were still teens. However well calculated or arbitrary they might have been, they often set us on a somewhat deterministic path in life. With time, we discover more of who we are, what we like, and what our strengths and weaknesses are. Those later stage discoveries either reinforce the choices we had made earlier, or come into conflict with whom we had grown to become. Much of the existential angst for young adults centre around the issue of what to do…
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Excerpt: A lot of executive research has gone into narrowing down the characteristics that define a great leader. The winner in 2009 is: Mr. Dull. This is no surprise to anyone who’s read Jim Collins’ Good to Great, where he found the best CEOs to be down-to-earth, humble, and diligent individuals that are dependable and follow through on their duties. That was perhaps in direct contradiction to decades of charisma leadership worshipping, where celebrity status had been doled out for the likes of Jack Welch and Lee Iacocca. Now the reversal is complete. Going from boom to doom, steady growth to…
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Excerpt: Technology has enabled real-time feedback. What used to take days, a team of customer representatives, and myriad of layers to get through to management, is now just an email, Twitter, or forum posting away. Businesses are now frantically scrambling to deal with an unprecedented amount of feedback – many unsolicited, and are working on a credible and systematic way of incorporating said feedback into its strategy and execution cycles, product development, customer service, distribution and all other facets of operations. It’s certainly worked out well for a lot of businesses, particularly those focused on unique customer service propositions. Dell, Zappos…
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Excerpt: Loss aversion is not a new theory. The basic premise of the idea describes our strong preference to avoid losses versus our desire for gains. In laymen’s term, we are supposed to feel more displeasure from losing 10 bucks, than the pleasure of gaining 10 bucks. As a result, even when logic implies one should take the loss and move on, many do not. An obvious example would be stock market behaviour, where signs of loss prevention lurk at every turn. Many investors refuse to sell stocks at a loss even when all signs point to more price drops. The…
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Excerpt: I am beginning to wonder if mainstream education and conventional wisdom is treating entrepreneurship all wrong. Last week, I had a conversation with my boss-in-start-up, who introduced the term the “iterative process” into my business vocabulary. Today, I came across this eye-opener. The article, and the paper discussed, questions if there is any fundamental difference between the way MBAs and your average boot-strapping entrepreneur bring product ideas to market. And the answer is a resounding yes. 1. Change the question. During the research, it was found from the get-go, the two groups appear to attack two potentially different sets of problems. Entrepreneurs…
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Excerpt: During the past year, business education institutions have been dealt some severe blows. Perceived greed, lack of foresight, and general incompetency of many offending CEOs have been traced back to those hallowed halls that minted MBAs. But business schools and MBAs are not the only source of business training around. Letters behind the names of bankers and investment professionals tell another story. For years, professional organizations have been churning out certified accountants (CA, CMA, CGA) as well as investment professionals. The most prominent and prestigious one has always been the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. This professional designation is known for…
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Excerpt: I know a number of people who are in the process of starting up their business. It’s an exciting time, but also an uncertain time. Aside from the usual challenges faced by an entrepreneur: fumbling in the dark, making constant adjustments, overstretched and overworked by a myriad of tasks ranging from sales to technical support. But one thing that may ultimately separate success from failure is whether a budding entrepreneur can deal with the dichotomy that exists between his lofty vision and the daily grind. Start with a vision For professionals that foray into business for themselves, there usually exist visions of…
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Excerpt: Everyone knows what they make from their work, but many are either over or underestimating what they make on an hourly basis. A friend once told me whenever she got fed up with work, she would add up all the different components of her compensation, including bonus, pension top-ups, health and dental benefits, travel opportunities, and sum up all the time she spent getting to work and working, and figure out how much she was getting paid on an hourly basis. That number was usually motivating enough for her to finish whatever cumbersome tasks laid in front of her. For some…
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Excerpt: If I was eighteen, and clueless about what I wanted to do with my life, I would do business school all over again. I’m not eighteen anymore, so I would not go back to business school. Not when there are many other ways of learning out there. 1. I’m not fit to give you any business advice A couple of months ago, a friend of mine headed back to school in a remote community in interior BC. She wrote to me, excitedly about her new surroundings. She was also excited about a business idea she’s had: the campus was set up miles away…
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Excerpt: Time and time again, I hear tales of friends getting stuck in their lives because there are too many factors outside of their control. There are student loans to pay off, financial responsibilities to meet, expectation from parents to placate. It is a lot to take on. And in the midst of all these, it’s all too easy to feel like a hamster on a wheel, spinning constantly without getting ahead. Right? Bullshit. If you are in your twenties and early thirties, and yet to be saddled with the responsibilities of children, then what are you whining about?…
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