12 Reasons A-Holes Win and You Don't Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Kues A "know-it-all" who doesn't know what he is talking about is a jerk; whereas a "know-it-all" who does know what he is talking about is merely an a-hole.- from Get Out of Your Own Way by Mark Goulston As much as I wholeheartedly agree with the philosophy behind Bob Sutton’s New York Times best-selling book The No Asshole Rule, I have to conclude that a-holes have always been around and probably always will. An even more disheartening truth is that more often a-holes seem to win whereas nice guys do seem to finish last or at least far behind their obnoxious counterparts. And here’s why: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 6 Reasons The Working From Home Trend is Going to Revolutionize Business Share This Story, Choose Your Platform! Technology and the internet have created a global village. Geographical boundaries are blurred and worldwide communication is seamless. People are increasingly abandoning the traditional office-based job, by either forging their own entrepreneurial paths or negotiating work contracts where working from home is permitted. Despite this trend, some businesses don’t want to embrace remote working. However, the fact remains: working from home is here to stay. 1. Allowing a culture where employees can achieve business goals while working from home broadens your talent pool. For smaller businesses on a budget, outsourcing from countries with a lower cost of living has become a viable alternative. 2. According to the State Of Workplace Productivity Report, 65% of employees think a flexible, working from home schedule will increase their productivity. There’s a clear divide between what employees want and what employers are willing to sacrifice. 3. 4. 5.
Who Can You Trust? Imagine that you’re negotiating a multiyear deal to provide outsourcing services to a large company. The client tells you that her firm wants to sign on for a certain level of services, but she’d like you to be willing to deliver more on the fly, trusting that you’ll be able to work out terms for the additional resources as the need arises. Should you agree? Or imagine that a potential business partner wants to buy $12 million worth of services from you but can spend only $10 million because of temporary budget constraints. Situations such as these present dilemmas for any manager. The two scenarios above come from a friend of mine—let’s call him Rob—who is a partner at one of the world’s largest consulting firms. Success in business unquestionably requires some willingness to cooperate with and have faith in others. So when your company’s money and resources are on the line, how can you do a better job of gauging trustworthiness and thereby improve your likelihood of success?
15 Secret Hiding Places That Will Fool Even the Smartest Burglar Keeping your stuff safe from potential burglars is important. Whether you have a security system installed in your home or not, there is nothing wrong with a bit of extra protection. Instead of heading out and buying the most expensive safe on the market, you can actually hide your things strategically around the house and burglars will never find them. If you have jewelry, cash or any other valuable that you want to keep extra safe, there are many DIY ways to hide those things from burglars. Incidentally, you can use some of these ideas to hide Christmas gifts from the kids as well. Some of the ideas are products that you can purchase from most hardware stores or Wal-Mart. Stash Cash in the Door? You can actually create a great hiding place for cash in the top of any interior door. Make Your Own Hide-A-Key You can buy those little hollowed out rocks for hiding your spare key but you don’t necessarily have to spend money to keep that key secure. Oversized Art Storage Hidden Jewelry Box
Interview - Harvard/MIT Lecturer Olivia Fox Cabane teaches you how to be more charismatic Olivia Fox Cabane is the author of The Charisma Myth. She’s lectured on the subject at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Google and the United Nations. I spoke with her about how charisma works, the science behind it and how anyone can become more influential. For brevity’s sake I’m only going to post edited highlights here. Subscribers to my free weekly newsletter get access to extended interviews. Join here. How does charisma work? Eric: In The Charisma Myth you break down charisma into presence, power, and warmth. Olivia: Absolutely. What most people get wrong about charisma. The most commonly held myth that I encountered when first doing this research was that charisma is an innate quality, that some people have it and some people don’t and whatever you’re born with you’re stuck with. Making your body language more charismatic has little to do with your body. Body language is in fact quite a bit more important than content. No. How about the position of your toes and your feet? Nope. [laughter]
MFBM University - Stratégies Marketing Université assurée par Franck Rocca Stratégiste Facebook Marketing depuis 2009 J'ai décidé de créer l'université pour vous permettre d'avoir un retour sur investissement rapide. Je suis parti d'un simple constat, aujourd’hui, il faut toujours tester pour arriver à optimiser. Quand vous avez déjà fait plein de tests comme nous, vous avez déjà une première notion de ce qui va mieux fonctionner. Et donc ce que je cherche à faire, c'est créer une université dans laquelle on s'échange les best practices sur le Facebook Marketing. Mais je pense que ce qui est fondamental, c'est de s'entourer de praticiens réguliers pour être capable de savoir ce qui fonctionne le mieux. L'un des buts de l'université est de rassembler des praticiens Facebook et de les transformer en experts, pour avoir tous ensemble des tas de cas pratiques desquels nous pouvons, les uns les autres s'inspirer. Des tests comme ça il faut en faire tout le temps, il faut tester les dernières fonctionnalités.
6 Toxic Relationship Habits Most People Think Are Normal There’s no class in high school on how to not be a shitty boyfriend or girlfriend. Sure, they teach us the biology of sex, the legality of marriage, and maybe we read a few obscure love stories from the 19th century on how not to be. But when it comes down to actually handling the nitty-gritty of relationships, we’re given no pointers… or worse, we’re given advice columns in women’s magazines. Yes, it’s trial-and-error from the get-go. But part of the problem is that many unhealthy relationship habits are baked into our culture. A lot of the self-help literature out there isn’t helpful either (no, men and women are not from different planets, you over-generalizing prick). Fortunately, there’s been a lot of psychological research into healthy and happy relationships the past few decades and there are some general principles that keep popping up consistently that most people are unaware of or don’t follow. Got Relationship Problems? Well, I got solutions. 1. Wrong. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
The Tools Early-Stage Startups Actually Need to Understand Their Customers | First Round Review After 18 months of struggling to get traction with two product ideas, Segment started its turnaround. What followed was a two-year stretch of growth from four to 60 people, thousands of new customers and $44 million over several rounds of financing. What was the trigger for such a significant inflection point? In the lead up to the sea change, Co-founder and CEO Peter Reinhardt and the team at Segment started to heavily lean into qualitative feedback tools like live chat widget Olark. It was embedded on each page and everyone from the newest hire to the co-founders were constantly learning from everyone using their product. It’s hard to pin all this momentum on tools, but knowing how to leverage them is at the core of Segment’s business. In this interview, Reinhardt draws from his extensive evaluation of tools to share how and when resource-constrained startups should select them. Where to Start When Selecting Tools First decide to build or to buy. Timing makes good tools great.