Gen Y may have a better handle on cyberspace, but it's awfully easy to get them to to blab their midemeanours with a little Twitterati trickery. Snakes & Ladders picks up on the report by BusinessWeek in which Carnegie Mellon researchers posted two very different surveys online....
How do you stop a profligate person from over-spending? You could cut their expenses allowance or withdraw signing power. Or you could try something a little more benign -- say, drawing a frown on their cheques, perhaps. I've picked a facile example, but this is the idea...
Garth's World offers some tips on making it through the summer sales drought. Plan ahead and be ahead of targets already. (That last bit's a joke, btw.) Pipeline development. Which companies should you be doing business with? Go beyond your usual prospects. Farm your...
Let's start with enterprise. Bad Entrepreneur explains the value of setting goals that are challenging, but reachable. The advice is sound: focus on a particular earnings figure per week. For BE, It started out of necessity. He set a figure that he needed to get him out...
Running big/long ads may not be the most effective use of your advertising spend, says John Billett in Marketing. The belief that big ads or long ads generate the most response isn't necessarily true. The biggest payoff comes if you start large, then switch to smaller ads as quickly as...
University cities and 'knowledge-intensive industries' are driving productivity in select English cities. But there is a widening gap between the UK's 'resurgent' cities -- which have revived flagging fortunes -- and 'stuck' cities, where economic growth has stalled. In its report, 'How Can Cities Thrive in the...
The boss is coming! Look busy. Here is the City offers some tips on "how to look busy" even if you're not... But don't let yourself become too busy, lest it drive you to an early grave. Apparently, a senior car engineer at Toyota in Japan was clocking up an...
There could be a serious spin to this: music can be a great tool in helping you focus on a task, as Jurgen Wolff explains. There may be a commentary about how art reflects the age in which it was made (in which case, expect 'The Bear Market Blues' any...
As the G8 leaders thrash out new targets for national energy consumption, a report by consultancy Pricewaterhouse Coopers reminded leaders of the need for "bold, early action". And investors such as the perfectly named oil tycoon T Boone Pickens in the US, and Blackstone in Europe,...
As Americans suffer from "vacation starvation", employees in Britain -- where annual leave allocation of 20 days is not uncommon -- are so fearful of being forgotten that they are forgoing their breaks. Executives are putting their holidays on hold as workplace pressures mount and the spectre...
"Imperial" board directors should be outlawed on US boards, which should de-couple the role of chairman from CEO, as is common on UK boards. The US has a serious governance problem, says Gary Wilson in the Wall Street Journal -- it's with the "Imperial CEO", the CEO...
UK business leaders have their heads in the sand as the economy goes into sharp decline, says the Hay Group's report, 'Fight or Flight?' It exposes what Hay describes as a "startling lack of forward planning" among British businesses. Just over half of the 120 senior business...
In straitened times, perks are a tricky area for employers looking to buoy spirits without busting out massive bonuses. It would be disingenuous to say pay doesn't matter. But engaging anyone -- from board members to employees -- is better done by allowing them to take ownership of strategies,...
Ex-Hewlett Packard boss Carly Fiorina has joined Republican John McCain's campaign as chief economic adviser and has quickly become a target for Democratic sniping, according to The Sunday Times. Fiorina, you may remember, was summarily fired from HP when she was felt to have lost her way...
This isn't new, but it's fun. The Telegraph's ‘Venture Navigator' allows you to test your entrepreneurial skills across different areas. Go play. Managers are like drunken cyclists, says Freek Vermeulen at Random Rantings -- that is, they look for easily visible solutions rather than peering into the...
No-one dies wishing he'd spent more time in the office, says Snakes & Ladders picking up on HBR's article, ‘When Virtue is a Vice'. People tend to place a higher premium on work than play. But authors Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz have done research that suggests...
Is this a blow for equality? It transpires that in the UK, the office sex pests are most likely to be ladettes. According to research by Peninsula, a Manchester law firm, 77 per cent of over 2,000 male employees surveyed had been sexually harassed by a female...
He'd said he was going to go at the end of June, and as good as his word, Sir Alan Sugar's given over the day-to-day running of Amstrad to plain Alun Webber, the managing director. The Hackney-born entrepreneur founded Amstrad at 21 and last year sold the...
Everyone seems to be talking about talent management at the moment. It came up as a priority for at least 50 per cent of Ashridge's Management Index of important trends, driving the business school to launch a course to help managers frame the business case and avoid common pitfalls. ...
177,000 people, 100,000 acres, 700 acts, 80 stages and 3,000 loos, rain forecast all weekend -- it must be Glastonbury. Now in its 28th year, it's also the perfect example of a sustainable business and rare proof of good project management in action. An audit last year...
