What’s the Fastest Growing Restaurant Chain in the U.S.?

10 Ways You Should Never Describe Yourself

When other people use these words to describe your talents, it’s OK. When you do it, you just sound like a pompous jerk.

Picture this: You meet someone new. “What do you do?” he asks.

“I’m a passionate, innovative, dynamic provider of architectural services who uses a collaborative approach to create and deliver outstanding customer experiences.”

And he’s off, never to be seen again… because you sound like a pompous ass.

When Data Collaboration is an Emergency

Hospitals are supposed to be safe places.

Unfortunately we do hear about mistakes that severely disable patients or even cost them their lives. There are probably many reasons why this happens, but in my experience I witnessed how patient information is not easily retrieved or shared—and therefore poorly analyzed—among a healthcare team. All of us depend on the medical community’s expertise as well as proper management of our personal medical data.

As I found this to be quite disturbing, I took it upon myself to gently ask one of the nurses about the management of their patient data. Here is what I discovered:

Get Out the Green Eyeshades: Budget Season Looms

Every year we go through the process of setting the next year’s marketing budget.

Even though we know it’s coming, we are seldom prepared. As a result, the budgeting process becomes a defensive scramble to justify spend, and often the way it’s approached is to open this year’s budget spreadsheet and click on “File/Save As” to create next year’s template.

Besides the fact that the document you just copied is probably not an accurate reflection of spend to date, just re-spinning last year’s model isn’t going to help drive your marketing organization to greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

Here are a few suggestions for getting the budgeting process off to a better start

The Red Queen Economy, Running in Place Faster

The Red Queen gets an undeservedly bad rap in most modern theatrical presentations.

Remember though, she is still a queen, able to move in any direction over the entire surface of the chess board, and despite all this talk of running in place, she is there at the end to celebrate Alice’s own promotion to queen as she reaches the edge of the board. This treadmill economy won’t last forever, and with proper preparation, you may even be able to step off yourself before the rest of your industry catches on.

CFOs Need to Float like a Butterfly. But Do They Need to Sting like a Bee?

I see where CFOs need to “Float like a Butterfly”. Not only do Chief Financial Officers need to be appreciated for their ability to (continually) transform, Successful CFOs are appreciated for their grace and form as they accomplish amazing tasks with what looks like relative ease.

Do CFOs need to “Sting like a Bee”? Do they need to inflict pain to accomplish corporate objectives?

Disrupt Yourself

My career path has been an unusual one. I started as a secretary on Wall Street, worked my way up in my firm’s investment banking group, and then stepped back to become an equity research analyst.

Eight years later, I quit that job to produce a TV show and write a children’s book, but I ended up blogging about work/life issues and cofounding a hedge fund backed by a man I’d met at church. It’s not what you’d call a traditional corporate trajectory.

But perhaps that’s the new normal.

Best Ways to Keep Customers From Leaving

Existing customers seldom jump ship because of price or functionality. Here’s the real reason they booted you out.

Most people think that selling means getting new customers. That’s part of the job, of course, but truly successful companies thrive on their ability to keep the customers they’ve already acquired.

The reason is simple.

The Post-Employee Economy: Why Sky-High Profits Are Here to Stay

The end of the age of consumption and the decreasing need for labor are more related than you think.

Robots have come to destroy our way of life, just as we saw in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, though not as we expected. They’re taking our jobs, and are forcing us to reexamine how we value ourselves.