“You’re grounded!”
These words have been uttered by many a parent as punishment for mischief-making teenagers. “Grounding,” in this sense, means you are taking the kid out of the action and putting her on the sidelines for a bit.
One mom I know said that grounding doesn’t work as a deterrent for her son because he likes [...]

Chade-Meng Tan is my new hero.
Meng, as he is known, is one of Google’s original software engineers. He has won numerous awards and his academic and technical achievement records are impressive.
But what impresses me the most is his pioneering spirit in the area of bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to the workplace. Right here in the [...]

Into which camp does your business fall?

You don’t have a logo, but wish you did
You don’t have a logo, and could care less
You have a logo, but have a hunch it’s not quite “it”
You have a logo that you love

Whether you are thrilled, disgruntled or mystified by the whole logo piece of your business, it’s [...]

I truly get off on witnessing a talent shared and embraced. It’s a beautiful thing.
Let’s start with dog competitions. I swear, I cry at dog shows and agility trials. There is something about seeing the natural instincts of a particular breed come to life that makes me weep.
I once watched a television show where puppies [...]

Polite drivers are dangerous.
Let me rephrase that: Drivers who bend traffic rules to demonstrate their politeness are dangerous.
In my town of Atlanta, GA, I see this all the time. Just yesterday I approached an intersection a few seconds after another car had arrived. It was just the two of us. The other car had clearly [...]

Kindergarteners consistently beat business students and other professional adults in the simple, but revealing, Marshmallow Challenge.
The Marshmallow Challenge is a team exercise that asks groups of four to build the tallest freestanding structure in 18 minutes using only 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow – which [...]

Many entrepreneurs ask me, “How do I get started? Where do I begin with marketing?”
I often see businesses spend a great deal of time and money on logos, websites, mailers and other tangible items, only to regretfully discover later that they somehow missed the mark. And now, businesses are jumping onto the social media bandwagon [...]

Resolutions schmezolutions! 
That’s the conclusion I came to years ago when I vowed never to waste my energy on New Year’s resolutions again.  
I’ve just never had much success with making resolutions — typically they felt like an external goal I was trying to reach, sometimes realistic and sometimes not. Usually it felt more like a “should” than [...]

Here’s a startling thought:  “It’s tougher recovering from a downturn than being in a downturn.”
This statement was made by Ira Jackson, Dean of Claremont’s Drucker School of Management, who was participating at the World Business Forum last week (Oct 6-7 in New York). The Wall Street Journal put together the video below, highlighting top management [...]

Accountants say, yes!, according to a survey by Ajilon Finance, a leading specialty finance and accounting staffing firm, and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA).
Two findings I thought were particularly interesting:
1. Soft skills ranked as more important than hard skills.  Thirty-three percent of the accountants who responded felt that an ability to inspire and motivate [...]