Skip to content

Category: Career

Setting yourself up for action: 4 tips

What makes the difference between productive workers and those who simply think they’re productive? Doing vs. talking. Here are four quick tips on how to set yourself up for action: 1. Jolt yourself into action by trying something. 2. Prototype your ideas. 3. Replace update meetings with "huddles." 4. Create testaments to progress.

To get ahead, ignore naysayers

As far as you’ve come in this life, people still try to impose limits on you. That’s what Kamala Harris, district attorney for San Francisco, warned newly minted graduates at San Francisco State University last year. Her message: Ignore those people.

Get in the game of life

Are any of you like I used to be? Always available to listen, motivate, brainstorm and basically provide your friends, family and colleagues with whatever they needed to play an outstanding game while you watched from the sidelines? After years of watching everyone take my advice, execute the perfect play and score, I was left with two distinct thoughts. One, it stinks being on the bench, and two, if they can do it, so can I. And so can you!

Create the next healthiest workplace

Last year, “Vitality Project,” sponsored by the United Health Foundation, set out to create the healthiest hometown in America. Its experts began working with town leaders in Albert Lea, Minn., to transform the way residents eat, work, exercise and play. To boost the health and well-being of the people in your office, follow Albert Lea’s best tactics:

Transform problems into solutions

What’s the best way to solve a problem at work? Figure out exactly what’s wrong and fix it. Right? Not according to Marcus Buckingham. The author of Find Your Strongest Life says that’s an example of “Deficit Attention Disorder.” He says thinking in terms of the problem only amplifies negative feelings. He recommends this more positive, productive approach:

Salaries dip, but there’s hope

Projected starting salaries for administrative professionals could see a decrease by an average of 2.2% in 2010. The good news: If you’re good at adapting to unexpected situations and able to quickly learn new skills, you’re the sort of person who will still thrive.

Read to lead

Do you read the publications that your customers, suppliers and outsourcing vendors read? If not, you’re putting yourself at a critical disadvantage and inviting unpleasant surprises. 

5 traits for rising to the top

What does it take to reach the top of your game professionally? Women, at least, can learn much from a new book, How Remarkable Women Lead, by Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston. The authors spent five years on research and 100 in-depth interviews with women leaders from around the world. They discovered that women who excel share these five qualities:

Triumph in failure

Think like an inventor by looking for opportunity in failure. British inventor James Dyson says that in trying to develop a fine blade of high-speed air for another product, his team accidentally came up with new hand-dryer technology.  “We saw, in that moment of failure, an idea that had huge advantages in another field,” he says.