The New MBA: A Masters in Business Ambiguity
Fifteen years ago, I earned a Masters in Business Administration from a top business school. I studied the prescribed disciplines of marketing, economics, finance, operations, organizational behavior and leadership through lectures, textbooks, case studies, and group assignments. I learned that marketing revolved around 4 P’s, competition comprised 5 forces, and strategy boiled down to one of three choices: market leader, fast follower or low-cost provider. A leader was someone who could communicate the big picture, and managers had operational skills to oversee projects and people. A lot has changed since then. Driving for innovation is the rule today, not the exception. So what do future business leaders need to know and experience to lead successfully in today’s dynamic, unpredictable, and yes, exciting environment? Ten years ago, author Daniel Pink challenged us to think of the “MFA, or Masters in Fine Arts, as the new MBA.” Language is a powerful lever of change.
3 Ways to Control Your Dreams
Steps Method 1 of 3: Recording your dreams 1Buy a small notebook. This will be your dream journal, or a dream diary. In your dream journal, you'll write down what you hope to dream and what you remember dreaming. Set the journal close to your bed and keep a pen nearby so that you can quickly write down what happened in the dreams you remember when you wake up. 3Every morning, as soon as you wake up, write down your dream. Method 2 of 3: Practicing wakefulness 1Read through your target dream. 3Walk through your target dream. Method 3 of 3: Getting control in dreams 1Try "reality checks" throughout the day. 3Gradually build up to bigger activities. Tips Sleep in a quiet area with no distractions whatsoever (no laptop or iPad!). Ad Warnings You will not immediately be able to control your dreams. Article Info Featured Article Categories: Featured Articles | Dreams Recent edits by: Hailey Girges, Rustdustbust, Confusionist In other languages:
Lean for Service Operations, Takt Time
Takt Time is the maximum allowable time in order to meet demand; Takt Time is the pace by which product is produced and must fall within the Takt Time or set equal to the Takt time; if not, then there will be customer demand that might go unfulfilled. In this post, I’ll provide an example of how Takt Time can be used in a service-type operation and elaborate on how else it might be used outside of manufacturing. Takt Time is defined as the following: Takt Time = (Net Available Production Time / Required Output Rate) In service operations, we often deal with intangibles — not pieces, necessarily, but non-hard-good items, such as patents that need to be reviewed, items in an inbox, applications that need to be approved or denied, or calls that come into a helpdesk. Another such example that we’ll examine is the dreaded Tax Return. Suppose the process above required that 150 Tax Returns are processes per 8 hour day. Number of Workstations Idle Time Improving Takt Time Other Applications
How To Use Teamwork to Make the Dream Work
By Kristen Gramigna, BluePay Despite your desire to create a brand identity that cultivates lasting customer relationships, increases awareness, and serves as a meaningful point of differentiation in the marketplace — your employees greatly impact your delivered customer experience. Yet, the quality of service they provide customers directly relates to their pride and value of being part of your business. Give them a reason to care. Leverage this inherent nature of small-business work life to your business-model advantage by cultivating the ideologies of holacracy — a non-traditional business structure embraced by brands like Zappos — to place equal accountability on each employee. Allow your team to shapeshift. Manage from the sidelines. Orchestrate social exchange. Give credit where credit is due. Kristen Gramigna is Chief Marketing Officer for BluePay, a credit card processing firm that caters to various types of businesses. Request Website Magazine's Free Weekly Newsletters
An Easy Health Plan and Workout Plan
Editor’s Note: This guest post was by Mike O’Donnell a professional fitness coach and trainer. His blog can be seen at The IF Life Fred Flintstone is not my idea of a real caveman as he had a car (albeit powered by a foot engine), worked sitting on a dinosaur, and got his food from a drive-thru (we have all seen where the brontosaurus ribs tipped over his car). But if you look at the overall health and fitness of the Paleolithic (or “hunter and gather” period from 10,000 years ago) cavemen, they were all pretty strong, not overweight by today’s standards, and did not suffer from modern degenerative diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancers. Most people will argue “Well they had an average shorter life span compared to today,” which actually is true but not for the reasons some think. Cavemen lifted heavy things Caveman sprinted and walked for survival Survival meant making sure they had something to eat and not being the dinner for something else. Lift heavy stuff
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Practical Collaboration: How to Actually Achieve Collaboration in an Organization | HARMAN Professional Solutions Insights
Every industry has buzzwords, and the technology sector is undoubtedly the worst. It’s just part of how people are, especially when marketing gets involved. People know that customers are looking for a particular concept and we glom on to the word that ties into that concept. When you overuse a term like collaboration, the resulting meaningless buzzword—which I term “#Collaboration”—becomes a useless marketing tool and an inherent overpromise that technology manufacturers can never hope to deliver. Trying to separate interrelated concepts of “cooperation” and “collaboration” is not helpful if you don’t take time to actually define them and show when each is helpful and beneficial (because cooperation and collaboration are both necessary and often happen at the same time). In order to answer that question, I went to some collaboration experts in various roles within HARMAN Professional Solutions. W This is great advice from Jeff. Automation can get meetings started faster.
Karma Singh - The Biology of Power
The Kaizen Project
Whereas the traditional "waterfall" approach has one discipline contribute to the project, then "throw it over the wall" to the next contributor, agile calls for collaborative cross-functional teams. Open communication, collaboration, adaptation, and trust amongst team members are at the heart of agile. Although the project lead or product owner typically prioritizes the work to be delivered, the team takes the lead on deciding how the work will get done, self-organizing around granular tasks and assignments. Agile isn't defined by a set of ceremonies or specific development techniques. Rather, agile is a group of methodologies that demonstrate a commitment to tight feedback cycles and continuous improvement. The original Agile Manifesto didn't prescribe two-week iterations or an ideal team size. Teams choose agile so they can respond to changes in the marketplace or feedback from customers quickly without derailing a year's worth of plans.
What’s A Vector?
Bread, Hearth Cooking, Urban Vegetable Gardening, and Traditional Foodways
