As my year-end consumption of ‘top ten lists‘ continues, I came across one on Chicago Now called “The Top 10 Small Business Trends of the Decade” by Barry Moltz. In the list he mentions several things that have all dovetailed together to define the changing nature of work — most centered around the pros and [ Read More ]
Scott Shane‘s recent article on Business Week is called, “Beware the Freelance Economy.” In it, he posits that cheering for the increased number of new businesses is premature, since so many of them are really solo practitioners (a.k.a. “freelancers”). His point is that, because of this, these firms are not realistic sources of new jobs [ Read More ]
I was reading an article this weekend, on Entrepreneur.com, and it actually made me a little snarky. In Health Insurance, a 401(k) and…Facebook?, author Justin Petruccelli discusses a new Junior Achievement/Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey in which 58% of teenage respondents stated that the ability to use social networks would be a factor in their decision-making [ Read More ]
Many people don’t think about it specifically, but know it intuitively: if you want good customer service, skip the big guys and go to a small company. In Small Business’ Competitive Advantage, I discuss that Customer Service is the magical pixie dust for small business. Think about your normal daily experience: if you need to [ Read More ]
In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the November round of layoffs at several big companies. Of course, part of what brought these to my attention is that a dear friend of mine got caught in the pre-holidays cut-backs at Adobe. Even worse, however, was the fact that my friend loved working at [ Read More ]
Strategy is sexy. Operations is not. This is often a problem in the modern business world: everyone wants to be a strategist. Aside from being seen as the best place to get to experiment with the new, fun stuff, it’s also usually seen as the side of the business with all the perks — travel, [ Read More ]
Job hunting is rough for oh-so-many reasons. One of the things that is hardest about it, though, is managing your own attitude and spirits. If there is one thing that is liable to get you into trouble during a job hunt, it is unmanaged anxiety. I’ve written before about some of the things that I [ Read More ]
I had an interesting conversation yesterday after I gave a presentation. I was talking about the necessary functions — particularly when it comes to communications, documentation, change management and entry/exit criteria — of project management in an Agile development process. The “interesting” conversation I had afterward was because one of the attendees (in a private [ Read More ]
The former CMO of Jive Software, Sam Lawrence, spoke to a crowded room at Interactive Austin this morning. His message was on the lessons needed to specifically apply in order to make social media work in your business. How We Say What We Say One of the challenges social media evangelists face is based on [ Read More ]
Ask anyone who got into an internet-based business prior to 2000, and you’ll hear nostalgic “good old days” stories, the way my grandparents talk about ‘when Kennedy was President.’ It’s hysterical to hear, and it saddens me endlessly to think about how long ago that was, but it really was an exciting time — and [ Read More ]
I had a couple of discussions this week that got me thinking back to the early days of my career. Aside from leaving me feeling older than I care to think about, it did spark a pleasant memory or two that I’ve been mulling over since. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how early career choices [ Read More ]
Last night I was reading a very interesting Harvard Business Review article by Umair Haque called Five Problems Venture Capitalists Should Have Solved (But Didn’t). Admittedly, I know very little about the world of venture capital (hence the reading), but this made me think of a panel I attended at SXSWi and he raised a [ Read More ]