How to Make NFL Season a Win-Win for the Workplace

NFL season has arrived, with the Green Bay Packers going against the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday night. For football fans, the season’s start is a time of great joy and excitement. For business owners and managers? Maybe not so much.

Football season inevitably means football-loving employees will be in constant distraction mode—whether checking game scores and pregame analysis on their work computers, trading fantasy football players or making tailgating plans for the weekend. How can you turn football season into a win-win for the office rather than a time suck and productivity loss?

Embrace the season. If you can’t beat …read more

10 Steps to a Remarkably Productive Workweek

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By Brian Moran

We all start our workweeks with the best intentions. We promise ourselves that “this week will be different.” That “I’m going to complete everything on my list.” That “I will take a walk on the hour for 10 minutes and not get distracted by bright shiny objects.”

Then, at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Monday morning, that first shiny obstacle appears. Next, a few time robbers enter your office. Before you know it, the workweek is over, and your to-do list has turned into a “haven’t done” list.

If you really want to get things accomplished and have a productive week every week, …read more

Finding Your Purpose: A Guide to Getting Unstuck When You’re Most Stuck

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By Erika Napoletano

Have you ever been stuck? You know that feeling you get of being so much in your own way that you can’t get anywhere, like a turtle flipped over on its back? If someone would just come along and flip you over, you could be on your merry way.

Odds are, you just might need someone like Erin Weed, founder and CEO of Boulder, Colorado-based evoso, to flip you back over and point you in the right direction. Weed and her team are professional “un-stuckers.” She’s coached multiple speakers to standing ovations at TED-branded events all over the country …read more

What Does It Mean to Be a CEO?

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By American Express OPEN

Women business owners at the OPEN for Women: CEO BootCamp event discuss what being a CEO means to them. Whether it’s executing your vision, following your passion, or building a legacy, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Should You Let Your Employees Work From Home?

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By Barry Moltz

Many business owners believe that in order to get employees to do their best work, they have to constantly watch over them and enforce rules to get expected results. There is a better way to get the outstanding team performance, increase productivity and reduce turnover.

A Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) is one where employees are evaluated solely on their performance, which is judged on output instead of time. Under this system, there is no requirement that employees work a certain number of hours. More importantly, there is no expectation that they do their work at the office. Using ROWE, …read more

9 Brutal Startup Mistakes That Can Kill Your Business (and How to Avoid Them)

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By Donna Fenn

Entrepreneurs are pretty optimistic people. After all, who else would put heart, soul, hard-earned cash and boundless energy into something that has a 50 percent chance of tanking within five years?

But the hearty ones who succeed know you need more then optimism and passion to make your business work: You need a road map that not only helps you identify the metrics for success but also warns you about the dangers that can surely derail you.

Granted, there are probably as many reasons for startup failure as there are startups, but here are nine common mistakes to avoid, along with some …read more

The Email From ‘Oprah’ That Changed This Designer’s Life

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By Katie Morell

Nearly every woman who wears a button-down shirt feels a mix of classy and self-conscious—the latter thanks to the almost unavoidable gap between the shirt’s buttons, which sometimes reveals skin or undergarments. (The 8-inches-below-eye-level glances from passers-by and colleagues only make matters worse.)

Rochelle Behrens knows this feeling well. Back in 2008, she was working as a lobbyist in Washington, DC, and wore a button-down shirt every day. “I thought they looked powerful and professional,” she says, “but soon my colleagues started commenting on how my shirts would gape open.”

To close the between-button gap, Behrens jerry-rigged a safety pin into the …read more

6 Steps to Breaking Bad Habits

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By Vivian Giang

Bad habits can hold you back, prevent you from reaching your goals and may even affect your health. These consequences are bad enough, but when you’re in a leadership position, the harmful habits you have may be filtering down through your company’s structure and affecting the rest of your team.

In today’s lightning-fast business environment where entire industries can be reshaped in a few short months, change is imperative. As a leader, you need to be able to change quickly if that means improving the probability of success for your team.

We understand that breaking habits, especially long-standing ones, can be tough. …read more

5 Ways Storytelling Can Kill Your Message

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By Mike Michalowicz

We tell stories because they paint pictures in people’s minds. When we can engage an audience—whether it’s one person or 2,500—and inspire them to think creatively, they become active participants in our performance.

Stories make our messages more memorable and persuasive, and they’re an essential element of public speaking.

But not every story works and sometimes a story falls flat, leaving the speaker wondering, “What went wrong?” Take a look at these five common mistakes storytellers make and eliminate them from your next speech.

1. All you have is a story. Whether a speaker isn’t properly focused or is simply looking to stretch …read more

Get Creative: 10 Ways to Think Outside the Box

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By Vivian Wagner

Smart business owners encourage their employees to be creative. After all, employees are on the front lines and often know better than anyone how to improve a business.

Inspiring and supporting creativity, however, isn’t always easy. If you’d like to get the creativity flowing in your business, try these 10 techniques.

1. Encourage Free Thinking

It may seem obvious to promote free thinking, but it’s not always the way that businesses work. We often continue doing what we’ve been doing—and how we’ve been doing it—simply because, on some level, it works. But free thinking is central to keeping your business contemporary, relevant and …read more