Survey Results: Bankers Say “Wrong-Doing is Necessary”

Triangles, Tools, and Transformations

Whether you know it or not, you are already doing driver-based budgeting and forecasting with your spreadsheets today, but in a very restricted fashion, with only one primary driver, typcially ‘headcount’ for most line items, and defaulting to a weighting of 100%. Not terribly sophisticated, not at all transformative, but ever since VisiCalc it’s been all we’ve had to work with.

Those days are now over.

3 Tips For Becoming More Strategic

We are entering the age of the strategist.

You don’t need a formal strategy role to help shape your organization’s strategic direction. Start by moving beyond frameworks and communicating in a more engaging way.

Involving more senior leaders in strategic dialogue makes it easier to stay ahead of emerging opportunities, respond quickly to unexpected threats, and make timely decisions.

Be Graceful Under Pressure: 7 Tips

Why do some choke, while others stay cool and calm? It’s all about you how prepare.

You’re on stage. Three hundred pairs of eyes are fixed on you. You’re killing: Twenty minutes in and the audience is in the palm of your hand.

Then your slide show freezes up.

Your skin tingles. Your body tenses. You stammer. Your eyes dart back and forth from the audience to the screen to your laptop to the stage manager in the wings.

You fall apart. What now?

The World’s Best Airlines

Chocolate, champagne, fashion show, origami classes, spa treatments, anyone?

If you’ve flown economy on an American jetliner in the past few years or so, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that none of 2012′s best airlines are American companies.

In other parts of the world—namely the Middle East and Asia—airlines take your comfort seriously, and not just on first class flights.

Where You’ll Want to Live in 2032

Using metrics that include economic, workplace, community, and personal choice factors, Gallup found what will be the most livable U.S. region 20 years from now.

If you want to find the U.S. states and regions with the brightest future, look west. Gallup analysis shows that the West North Central, Mountain, and Pacific regions are likely to be the best areas to live in 20 years, based on the strong economic, health, and community foundations they are building today.

Survey Results: Bankers Say “Wrong-Doing is Necessary”

In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.

Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.

Why CFOs Shouldn’t Leave Ethics to HR

I have worked with CFOs who leave the issue of ethical conduct to the HR and legal functions.

But others have taken a different view — they take a significant interest in ensuring that management and employees always behave in an appropriate fashion, consistent both with laws and regulations and the expectations and standards of the organization. They realize that not only can inappropriate behavior lead to compliance failures, fraud, and theft, but the consequences can adversely affect employee morale and the firm?s reputation.

The bottom line is that ethical failures can affect operational and financial performance and share price.

The Ethics Resource Center recently a business ethics report, based on a survey of 4,800 employees. I was surprised by some of the statistics and suspect most CFOs will be too.

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.