Superhero Leadership: 3 Lessons From Marvel Comics' Unlikely Success

October 2, 2015, 3:13 pm

≫ Next: Millions of Federal Student Loans Lining Up to Be Eliminated and Borrowers Repaid

This article was originally published on riskology.co

Martin Goodman was a man who understood the importance of taking risks. The oldest of 13 children born to Lithuanian immigrants, he grew up in the great depression and traveled the country living in hobo camps. Hardship and despair was prevalent across America. The risk-takers of his parents' generation had destroyed the economy and Americans, in general, were playing it safe.

Martin yearned for something big, though. He wanted to be a publishing man, and he got himself started by managing clients for the Eastern Distributing Corp. [1] He worked hard, took chances on his intuition, and climbed the corporate ladder. He was on his way to great things. Then, Eastern Distributing went bankrupt and Martin lost his job.

This would send most people into depression, but Martin carried on, resolved to go bigger. A few jobs and small successes later, Martin decided to start his own company, Timely Publications. He'd noticed superhero characters were becoming popular, so he made an enormous bet. He hired a company to develop a super hero comic book and printed a million copies. His first comic and he was already betting the company on it.

If they called him crazy, it wasn't for long. Martin worked hard to develop his leadership and intuition for products that could go big, and he knew he had a hit when his writers delivered the star character in his new magazine: The Human Torch.

If this story is starting to sound familiar but you can't quite place it, The Human Torch went on to become a founding member of The Fantastic Four--one of the longest lasting and most recognizable comic brands in history. It's owned by Marvel Comics which, you guessed it, is the name Martin traded for Timely Publications in 1961.

If Martin's story teaches us anything, it's that, if you want to know how it feels to create something great, you must also know how it feels to go out on a limb and stand at the brink of failure.

If you want to ride that wave and experience it yourself, there are three important leadership lessons and rules for success from the Marvel story.

1. For Big Motivation, Take Big Risks

Have you ever noticed how spending $5 on a little extra at the store takes almost no thought at all but when you're about to buy something big--a new car, a computer, a vacation package--you spend a considerable amount of time and attention on it.

We're hardwired to focus and get the big things right because the big things are also the riskiest things. We're motivated to avoid loss. It takes a lot of money to buy something big, and a lot of money, for most of us, means a lot of time spent working. If you blow it, it'll be a long time--and many hours at work--before you can try again.

That $5 trinket you picked up on a whim? If it turns out to be a bad choice, you'll just toss it and try again.

Martin Goodman sold a million copies of his first comic book because he didn't have any other choice--the printer wasn't going to take them back if they didn't go. He was motivated to make it work because any other outcome would have been disaster.

I call this the Time Bomb Method" of goal achievement. If you want to make sure you do something big--especially when you're not sure you have what it takes--put some details in place ahead of time that are permanent and make failure an unattractive option.

Read next:How to Guarantee You Complete Your Dreams (Even If You Suffer From Last-Minute Anxieties)

That's not to say you should jump head first into something that could ruin you with no sign that success is possible. Before you take an enormous risk, take a small one first.

When I wrote that Goodman ordered a million copies of his comic, I left out an important detail. He actually ordered 100,000 copies first, as a test. When those sold out, he knew he was on to something and he was ready to make an enormous bet on a much bigger order. The second run, of course, sold out just like the first.

2. Set Tight Deadlines to Give Yourself Tight Focus

In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion. Yes, billion with a b. And if that's not impressive enough, Marvel had lost its way and gone bankrupt just a decade earlier.

In a way, the Marvel story is a perfect reflection of every great comic book. Good has been defeated and it seems evil prevailing is a foregone conclusion. Just as the scene is about to go dark, a hero appears. They're unwilling to go down without a fight. Time is short so the hero springs to action. They quickly ready themselves for battle, they rally the townspeople around them and then, against all odds, they defeat the evil intruder and happiness is restored.

Marvel's real-life hero came in the form of an entertainment businessman by the name of David Maisel, and his superpower was the ability to rally an organization around tight, focused deadlines with incredible risk.

Nearly a decade after Marvel took the biggest hit of its life in bankruptcy court and no one was willing to commit to anything too big or too soon, Maisel convinced Marvel's leadership to take on the biggest challenge of it's existence--build its own movie production studio--and do it faster than anyone imagined possible.

They took a $500 million loan with just seven years to pay it back.

Remarkably, they did it. But anyone with a basic understanding of human psychology and Parkinson's law--the one that says any task will fill up whatever time you give it--would tell you, "Of course they did."

Impossible things often happen when the people who do them work on impossibly tight deadlines. They know that doing the right things is more important than doing everything. And the best way to force yourself to focus on the right things is to not give yourself enough time to focus on anything else.

Maisel knew the path to success was not just to do something big, but to do it quickly. He knew an impending deadline would rally the company into a sense of urgency to turn their situation around. It's what I like to call, Big Dream Theory. And it worked.

Read next: Why Big, Crazy Dreams Are Easier To Reach Than Small, Ordinary Goals

When you want to get something big done -- especially when you need the help of others to do it--your team needs to feel like the pressure is on and every action they take really counts. Tight deadlines inspire tight focus, and tight focus leads to success.

3. Don't Hesitate to Steal Great Ideas

Steve Jobs liked to say that "good artists copy, and great artists steal." [2] What he meant is that truly great ideas and products come from making refinements to ones that already exist. It's how Apple built the Macintosh, the iPod, and other products that redefined their generations.

Marvel--in it's start and again after bankruptcy--did the same. And so should you.

When Martin Goodman started Timely Publications with his first superhero comic book back in 1939, he wasn't setting the trend with a new idea. Comic books had been around for years and superhero comics were just starting to increase in popularity.

Martin took an enormous risk on something that he saw was already working. He took an existing concept, made it better and invested everything he had in it.

David Maisel did the same thing when he brought Marvel out of bankruptcy. Superhero movies had been made for decades. Even movies based on Marvel characters had been produced. He knew they could make a fortune with their own movies because other film studios were already making their own fortunes with Marvel's own characters. They stopped licensing their characters and started making their own films. They put everything on the line to make it work, and it did.

Chances are, whatever you're working on is not a brand new idea. That's not bad news; it's good news. It means you have a lot to work from. You can see where others have succeeded and failed before you. You can see what exists that could be better. And if you give it everything you've got to make it better, you'll probably do it.

Do This in the Next 10 Minutes

If you have an idea you want to see become a reality, you have some risks to take. And if you want to inspire others people to help you bring it to life, you have some big risks to take. Here's a reminder of what you need to do:

Make your risk even bigger. If you want to succeed, you need all the motivation you can muster, and that comes from committing yourself to something so big you can't ignore.

Give yourself challenging deadlines. Big things get done fast when people focus on the important, and there's nothing like a looming deadline to encourage that kind of focus.

Build on what already works. A new, novel idea is not nearly as useful to the world as an existing one taken to its greatest heights.

Ask yourself now what you can do to make your vision five times bigger. Then, ask yourself what you would do if you needed to finish it five times faster. Your answers will bring you closer to what will actually work.

To stand at the verge of success, you also have to stand on the brink of failure. That doesn't mean the odds of success and failure have to be the same--far from it. But the stakes need to be high. That's when your inner superhero emerges to save the day.

Tyler Tervooren founded Riskology.co, where he shares research and insights about mastering your psychology by taking smarter risks. For more, join his Smart Riskologist Newsletter.

Footnotes:
1. Interestingly, Martin was initially hired by Louis Silberkleit--the guy who would go on to create Archie Comics, one of Martin's future competitors.

2. Jobs attributed this quote to Pablo Picasso, but there's no evidence he ever said it.

Many of the factual notes in this piece came from here, here, here , here, here, and here.

Emily Lundberg contributed to this article.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Millions of Federal Student Loans Lining Up to Be Eliminated and Borrowers Repaid

October 2, 2015, 3:14 pm

≫ Next: Gems from the Success 3.0 Summit 2014

≪ Previous: Superhero Leadership: 3 Lessons From Marvel Comics' Unlikely Success

As a consumer debt expert for decades I've developed a pretty good sense of reading the tea leaves of debt. Sometimes this means making some sense out of puzzle pieces well in advance of assembly.

I'm getting that same strong sense that student loan debtors are on the verge of a bold new ability to discharge massive amounts of federal student loan debt for some very good reasons. The primary reason is they've been duped.

Student loan debt has typically been very, very problematic. Young people, their parents, and grandparents have been placed on the hook for massive amounts of debt that for some will burden them the rest of their lives and actually leave them broke in future retirement.

This level of debt, which most incorrectly assume can't be discharged in bankruptcy, is retarding household formation and robbing people of the ability to save early for retirement.

In the student loan debt situation it isn't so easy to point a finger at a single bad guy. All cogs of the system have blame to bear in the current student loan crisis. From well intentioned parents who push their kids to go to college that probably shouldn't, to people who think student loan debt is good debt, to colleges that charge higher and higher tuition and facilitate the loans, to incompetent servicers who give borrowers bad advice on how to deal with loan problems.

Gerri Detweiler, director of consumer education for Credit.com said, "Student loans can be incredibly confusing. Most students have a hard time keeping track of the loans they have, much less figuring out which ones are eligible for what type of relief. Add to that servicers who sometimes give flat out bad advice and it's no surprise consumers give up or end up making bad choices."

Curtis Arnold of CardRatings.com said, "I have three kids in college and grad school and, even though I've been a nationally recognized expert for 20+ yrs, I have found the student loan industry to be perplexing. There are so many types of student loans and so many changes that have occurred in the last few years, that it's downright confusing." The lack of clarity over student loans is why most students look to the school to facilitate the financing. Which they will gladly do.

Arnold went on to say, "I can not agree with the commonly held notion among many financial experts that student loan debt is "good debt". In fact, I would argue in some respects, student loan debt is worse than credit card debt." And he is right.

And the concern over student loan debt is not one for just the younger members of our population, but a growing concern for those over 50.

But a couple of recent events have made me believe a simple but easy answer to eliminate their student loan debt may exist for a vast number of federal student loan borrowers.

Recently the Department of Education brought a section of federal law to light that would allow federal loans to be eliminated if, "the borrower may assert as a defense against repayment, an act or omission of the school attended by the student that would give rise to a cause of action against the school under applicable State law." For more information on this, click here.

And if this approach to eliminating student loan debt is successful the borrower would be eligible to receive any amount paid towards the loan and the school would have to repay the federal student loan back to the Department of Education.

In the past few weeks data on school performance has been made publicly available through two excellent websites; CollegeScoreCard.ed.gov and Propublica Debt by Degree.

The resulting set of data from those two sources is frightening.

Last week I traveled to Ball State University, after a very gracious invitation from Dan Boylan, where I spoke to a group of students about debt. As part of my presentation I took a quick look at the reported data about Ball State University and another school in the region, to compare results.

I think you would agree that the value for money Ball State University delivers is good. Their cost is below average while their graduation rates and salary after attending is higher than average.

But notice that the average national graduation rate is about 50%. That means half of students never earn the needed degree to receive the maximum benefit of enrolling in school. I've seen statistics that show up to 75% of people with student loan debt never graduate when you factor in all types of schools.

So the observation I think is most important from this data is it is quite possible an argument could be made that schools have unfairly misled students into federal student loans when they knew in advance they would never be able to deliver even average performance.

Let's look at two examples that I spotted during my trip.

Ivy Tech Community College - Indianapolis, IN

Ivy Tech came to me because of some excellent advertising they were doing at the bottom of the TSA bins I had to use at the airport. The ads were bragging about the value of attending and how much it would help students towards future salaries and success. But the data reported paints a different picture.

While the average annual cost of attending Ivy Tech is much lower than average, so are the graduation rates and salary. The data reports only 9% of students graduate after six years.

But in the IVY Tech ads I saw, there certainly was not any claim that 91% of students sold into the school would not obtain the advertised benefit. - Source

Following attendance, 53% of students are not repaying their federal loans. The school made the money but the government is on the hook.

Martin University - Indianapolis, IN

Another Indianapolis area school I discovered on my travels is Martin University. Students who attend Martin University are more likely to come away with an even worse result. - Source

Martin University tells the public their mission is, "Martin University's Vision is to be a Haven of Hope, a Community of Support, and a Premier Leader among Institutions of Higher Education." - Source

But when it comes to the performance numbers, Martin costs much more per year than either Ball State University or Ivy Teach. According to ProPublica the total cost per year, including tuition, books, and living expenses is $22,038. Low income students paid on average $17,631.

The median level of federal student loan debt is $42,247 per student and the graduation rate is just 12%. The nonpayment rate on federal student loans is reported to be 85% and 57% of past students, six years after graduation, earn less than $25,000 per year.

The average median monthly student loan debt payment for Martin University students is reported to be $469.03 and most students pay the tuition with federal loans.

Arguments That Will be Made

Some low performing schools will make the argument that they serve a disadvantaged population that is less likely to graduate for a number of socioeconomic factors. I completely understand that position.

Other schools will say they have no control over the seriousness or ability of the students they enroll. I understand that as well.

But the reality is students and their parents are trying to make an investment in themselves and the future. Schools are encouraging students to enroll and will gladly suck in all the easy loans they can deposit from federal and private loans. Up till now, they have not been very accountable to the purchaser for delivering the product they sold.

But if a school is either not achieving the average performance of schools and does not disclose the odds are significantly not in the favor of the student, it seems boldly withholding that information is an unfair and deceptive practice. Fraud maybe?

Why would anyone enroll at the more expensive and lower performing school?

In Indiana, Martin University is not the only school facing poor performance data.

Schools like the Art Institute of Indianapolis have a much higher annual cost and average graduate salaries in the $25,200 range.

It's not going to be long before attorneys start to see the massive patterns of performance and practices that could qualify for federal student loan discharge as explained here.

Attorney Carl E. Person seems to agree their is an issue to explore here. He said, "Students (and their guarantying parents) before starting to take the course have been defrauded by schools because they don't tell the students and their parents that the course of instruction does not enable its graduates from the program to earn sufficient income to pay the tuition and maintain a minimum standard of living."

Think about the situation like this, would you buy a car that only had an 11% chance of achieving the goal of getting you to work?

Some schools will say they are not selling degrees but education and a benefit is obtained by people who take any class. But that's not what the vast majority of students hope to achieve. They don't enroll to take a few classes and dropout. They enroll to earn a recognized degree and build a better future based on the degree. The schools should tell the students what the chance is of that actually happening before they sacrifice their financial future to some slick advertising.

Steve

Get Out of Debt Guy - Twitter, G+, Facebook

If you have a credit or debt question you'd like to ask, just click here and ask away.

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This article by Steve Rhode first appeared on Get Out of Debt Guy and was distributed by the Personal Finance Syndication Network.

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Gems from the Success 3.0 Summit 2014

October 2, 2015, 3:15 pm

≫ Next: Poaching vs. Recruiting: You Can't Recruit Away Happy Employees

≪ Previous: Millions of Federal Student Loans Lining Up to Be Eliminated and Borrowers Repaid

The Success 3.0 Summit took place in Fall of 2014, and the conversations that were born there are still continuing, boldly evolving the narrative of Success in the world, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, and Show Up and Outrageous Love.

Here in this blog we're going to take a dive into the idea of Success. We will also explore the visionary work we're doing as a movement - on evolving a post-dogmatic shared language of meaning and success.

To begin, we excerpt from Marc Gafni's brilliant keynote talk - check out the video below for gems from Marc's talks!

Transcript:
I want to ask you to reach now. To stretch, to stretch in mind, to stretch in body, to stretch in heart.

We are going to try to kind of lay down a narrative that works and makes sense, because when a narrative doesn't make sense, when you make up a narrative, it doesn't work. You need a narrative that is coherent, compelling, that actually takes us there.

I'm remembering a gentlemen named Yuli Edelstein. I don't think anyone here knows him. He was a prisoner of conscious. Does anyone here remember the Soviet Union? Show of hands? There was a gentleman named Brezhnev who was the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union and there was a gentleman named Jaruzelski. How many of you remember him? Poland?

Remember Poland when the labor unions were merging before, as Raj said yesterday, before that huge event happened that the Berlin Wall fell. Brezhnev was going to visit Jaruzelski because there were problems in Poland and Yuli Edelstein told me this story. He told me that this story was traded around Siberia in all the prison camps. This story kept people alive in the prison camps. So here's the story.

The story is that Brezhnev went to Jaruzelski and asks, "What presents should I bring him?" He said, I'll bring him a present. I'll have a painting of Lenin's famous trip to Poland. So he commissions a painting of Lenin's trip to Poland. The problem was that Lenin had never visited Poland, but in communism you kind of create a narrative. So they kind of convened everybody to kind of do this painting, but no one wants to do it.

There's this old Jewish dude, Revinewitz who says, "I can take care of that. Not a problem." Three weeks later they are in the inner sanctum of the Polit bureau. Revinewitz walks in with this easel, drape clothes like they do. He unfolds the painting that there is a man and woman fully, you know... engaged. Someone screams, "I don't understand, who is that woman?" That's Elia, Lenin's wife. Who's that man? That's Tratzki. "I don't understand, where is Lenin?" he says, and the answer comes, "He's in Poland!"

So you can create a false narrative, but a false narrative can't take you home. So I want to work on the narrative for the next few minutes and I want to actually engage everyone in the room and invite you to actually write a narrative and I give you a promise, an absolute promise that what you write for your narrative in the next ten minutes, you'll remember it for the rest of your life. It's a game-changing moment. So here's the two lines that we have been working with, but I know want to go into them much deeper. Okay, let's kind of enter them.

The lines are -- and you can say them with me -- we've said it 10 times in the last three days. "We live in a world of...outrageous pain, the only response to outrageous pain is...outrageous love."

Now why are we using the word "outrageous"? Why don't we just say "love"? Because love is becoming an old word. It's too tepid. What's outrageous about? What's outrageous love? What's an outrage about?

To be continued...

We invite you to take a look at some Gems from Marc Gafni's talks at the Success 3.0 Summit 2014!

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Poaching vs. Recruiting: You Can't Recruit Away Happy Employees

October 2, 2015, 3:21 pm

≫ Next: Top 10 Candidate Questions aka Why Executive Recruiters "Qualify" You

≪ Previous: Gems from the Success 3.0 Summit 2014

You Can't Recruit Away Happy Employees - First and foremost, you can't recruit away happy employees. Surveys show that 50% to 70% of executives would make a move for the right job offer. After eleven years in the Recruiting business, my experience is that most people think they are underpaid and undervalued. In some cases they are correct; in many they are not. Most executives are actually being paid their market value based on their education and experience. So if a company has a beef, my recommendation is they should examine their culture and compensation packages. There is usually a valid reason the employees are leaving.

Top Reasons Why Executives Move On - The company is poorly managed, in financial distress, or has a poor company culture. Yep, totally get it! If the company is not well run and/or treats employees poorly, there is going to be employee churn. I have an "excluded" list of companies that I won't work with for exactly that reason - they are not a good place to work.

Personal Situations Can be an Exception - In several cases, I have helped friends make a move that has nothing to do with their current role. They were happy, but needed to move for personal reasons. A family member, usually a parent, has health issues and they need to relocate to help out. Or one of their children is off to college, and they want to be close to them. Maybe they five years before they retire and are looking for a nice sunny location.

You Can't Begrudge People for Moving Forward with Their Career - If someone is a Director at $125,000 and being offered a VP level role at $175,000, you can't begrudge them for progressing onward and upward. Yes, I know it's frustrating; however we all want to better our situation in life.

If You are Not a Client, You are a Sourcing Pool - Let me address "poaching." Executive Recruiters treat companies in one of two ways. If you are a CLIENT and sending a Recruiter business, they should NOT be poaching your employees unless there is a valid reason (see personal situations above). My contract specifically says that I am "hands off" of client employees and won't represent them for jobs. On the other hand, if you are not a CLIENT, then Recruiters are going to accept resumes from your executives and represent them. Why? Because they are paid to fill positions, and if you are not a client, you are in the sourcing pool.

Be Wary of HR Territorialism - There was once a Director, Recruiting that did everything in his power to keep me from working with his company. Unfortunately, he was not sourcing good candidates, and the "C" level executives above kept end running him and calling me directly. He was not happy, but is that my fault? This is a for-profit business that supports a dozen charities. It's what I do for a living. I'm not going to tell a CEO "no thank you" when he asks me for help. The Director, Recruiting was eventually terminated...and sent me a resume. Tip for HR executives. If you don't like external Recruiters, that is absolutely your prerogative. I'm not offended. But remember this; Executive Recruiters are going to give the big HR jobs to executives they know and trust. Why? First and foremost, because they know and trust them. Second, because they have supported the Recruiter, and the world runs on relationships.

The Proper Strategy for Recruiting - When I have a job, the first phase is to check my stable. Do I have someone queued up that is an exact match for the job description? Phase two is to put the job "on the wire" meaning I email 200 professional contacts for REFERALS. My specific verbiage is, "I have a CFO role at $300,000 in Las Vegas. I realize this is not a fit for you personally, however if you know of someone that would be a good fit, please point them my way." That is asking for referrals, NOT poaching. Had one executive send me a nasty email that I was poaching his employees. My response was, "First, I was looking for referrals. Second, and not to be disrespectful, but you don't have anyone on payroll that would make sense anyway."

There is no Upside to Getting Sideways with Executive Recruiters - Don't get nasty with Recruiters! The last thing you need is them targeting your company as a sourcing pool. They can, and will, recruit away your top employees. Personally, not my model, however not everyone is as kind as me. Like your Mom always told you...play nice!

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Weekend Roundup: Syrian Refugee Crisis Triggers Bombs and Backlash

October 2, 2015, 5:06 pm

≫ Next: Global Economy Increasingly Vulnerable To Another Financial Shock

≪ Previous: Top 10 Candidate Questions aka Why Executive Recruiters "Qualify" You

This week the refugee crisis caused by Syria's horrific civil war moved to the next stage. Though prompted into action to curb the carnage, the U.S. and Russia are at odds over whom to bolster and whom to bomb. With no end to the conflict in sight, the influx of asylum seekers in Europe continues to swell and the prospect of permanent settlement there for the displaced grows. In even the most welcoming countries a political backlash is in the making. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's popularity at home is falling for the first time as compassion reaches its limits. In Sweden, the anti-immigrant right-wing party now tops the polls.

Alex Gorlach explains why many Germans are now doubting Merkel's refugee policy, including President Joachim Gauck, who has said that while "our hearts are wide open . . . our absorption capacity is limited." Akbar Ahmed chronicles Germany's long engagement with Islam going back to the likes of Goethe, and wonders if Merkel's kindness toward refugees is linked to that historical "soft spot." In a short essay that discusses how some Europeans feel their way of life is threatened by refugees and migrants, I recall the ideas of the great pluralist thinker Isaiah Berlin and cite the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. "One of the great Left taboos," Zizek says, "will have to be broken here: the notion that the protection of one's specific way of life is in itself a proto-Fascist or racist category. If we don't abandon this notion, we open up the way for the anti-immigrant wave which thrives all around Europe." In an interview, IMF chief Christine Lagarde discusses the double European crisis of refugees and Greek debt.

The assumption that Syrians seeking refuge from the conflict would not stay long outside their borders has proven "devastatingly wrong," writes Louise Finan. The more than 4 million people now displaced in the region around Syria five years after war broke out, she says, are beginning to look like the Palestinians who still have not been able to return to their homes decades after they first fled. Similarly, Jina Krause-Vilmar says that interim opportunities that stop short of full integration must be provided for refugees in Lebanon and Jordan who are going nowhere soon. Daoud Kuttab argues that Jordan must grapple with the challenge that the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees now there for an extended time must sooner or later gain access to the job market. From Athens, Angeliki Kougiannou reports on the generosity of a woman in Greece who took in stranded refugees.

We also review what an array of world leaders, from Jordan's King Abdullah to French President Francois Hollande, had to say at the United Nations this week about the Syrian refugee crisis and remember that the migrant calamity in Calais continues. Rowaida Abdelaziz walks us through a day in the life of those caught in another brutal war raging in the region in Yemen.

Nick Robins-Early reports on the widely-held suspicion among American policymakers that Russian airstrikes in Syria are aimed more at buttressing Assad than blasting ISIS. In this week's "Forgotten Fact," Charlotte Alfred traces the evolution of the conflict in Syria to show "there would be no ISIS without Assad." She also reports on why Russian maps of Syria have vastly different versions of where ISIS controls territory. In an interview, Cambridge University international law professor Marc Weller questions the legality of the strikes. Raghida Dergham says the Russian intervention "has imposed on the United States, Europe and the Arab nations a fait accompli, which they have no choice but to accept. Ian Bremmer sees Putin's move in Syria as a reminder to the West that Russia is still a player outside its neighborhood. Indeed, Faisal Abbas writes that Russia will from now on have "a much bigger say" -- and become a permanent presence -- in the region.

In an exclusive op-ed for The WorldPost, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas writes about "our moment of hope" when the Palestinian flag was raised at the U.N. this week for the first time.

In the wake of Chinese President Xi's announcement last week of a new cap-and-trade program to stem climate change in his nation of 1.4 billion, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd joins Dai Bingguo in a first-ever co-authored blog post with such a high-ranking former Chinese official on how "the East and West must work together" to build an "eco-civilization" for the future. Jeremy Haft argues that Donald Trump's obsession with China as a job-sucker is misplaced and questions China's official growth statistics.

Writing from Rome in our "Following Francis" series, Sébastien Maillard explains how the pope's "shock-the-Yankees-with-humility" gestures during his recent visit to the U.S. helped foster a "perspective of dialogue." Mariane Pearl writes about the global dialogue of Chime for Change that is "connecting the dots" in women's lives around the world.

Actor Matt Damon wants us to focus on the fact that 2.5 billion people live without clean water or toilets. Alexandra Ma reports on the "landfill salad" and other dishes served to world leaders at the U.N. this week to illustrate the amount of food that goes to waste on a hungry planet.

Writing from São Paulo, Brasil Post's Diego Iraheta says the crisis in Brazil has reached a critical moment in which responsible debate about the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff is necessary. Writing from Madrid, Montserrat Dominguez calls for new policies "capable of healing wounds and weaving a new space for coexistence" in polarized Catalonia. Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo is convinced that the nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers has bolstered the political chances for reformists.

Also this week, Charlie Rose interviewed historian Niall Ferguson about his just released biography, "Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist," at a book party hosted by The WorldPost at the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York.

In the last installment of our exponential technology series, the grand theorist of Singularity, Ray Kurzweil, talks in a video about how nanotechnology implanted in our brains can make us "more godlike." In an interview, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who filed antitrust charges against Google earlier this year, tells HuffPost, "What we're aiming for has nothing to do with Google as such -- it has to do with the market allowing innovation."

Also in an interview, Edward Snowden tells WorldPost partner Fusion, "there is nobody good enough to block every [cyber] attack." In our Singularity series we report on how new educational technologies for Kenya proposed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are running into the same kind of local resistance faced by the introduction of genetically modified organisms. "Much of the resistance to GMOs," the report notes, " comes from the heavy-handedness of their advocates and the sentiment that they were ultimately disempowering for many who adopted them."

In the "What's Working" category this week, Joseph Erbentraut tells the story of a campaign by women in Mumbai who purposefully "loiter" in groups at night in order to create safe public spaces for themselves, and Carol Kuruvilla reports on how Shia and Sunni Muslims prayed "shoulder to shoulder" in Lucknow, India for Eid.

Finally, see this remarkable video of a "dirty thunderstorm" in Chile where a volcanic eruption meets lightning.

furguson rose

Charlie Rose questions Niall Ferguson at WorldPost book party in New York. The WorldPost.

WHO WE ARE

EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels and Peter Mellgard are the Associate Editors of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost's editorial coverage. Eline Gordts is HuffPost's Senior World Editor. Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are World Reporters. Rowaida Abdelaziz is Social Media Editor.

CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.

EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).

VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS: Dawn Nakagawa.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large.

The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea.

Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the "whole mind" way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.

ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council -- as well as regular contributors -- to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian.

From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.

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The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.

We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.

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Global Economy Increasingly Vulnerable To Another Financial Shock

October 3, 2015, 11:59 am

≫ Next: 3 Reasons Wantrepreneurs Fail at Entrepreneurship

≪ Previous: Weekend Roundup: Syrian Refugee Crisis Triggers Bombs and Backlash

Seven years after the outbreak of the global economic and financial crisis, there are growing indications that the temporary solutions that were largely imposed through monetary policy by central banks are becoming increasingly ineffective. In all likelihood, a new global downturn in economic growth is in the cards.

The weakening economic data from China, slowdown in the U.S. economy's job growth, worsening data in emerging economies and the Eurozone, not to mention Russia, collapse of commodity prices and volatility in the equity markets are all indicators of distress. Furthermore, the continuation of near-zero interest rates by major central banks many years after the "Great Recession" supposedly ended means that there are no more arrows in their quiver when the next major global recession strikes.

One other factor to be assessed are the fantasy employment numbers in the United States. While the official unemployment rate has supposedly been cut in half since the darkest days in 2009, in reality labor force participation is at historic lows (http://www.ibtimes.com/us-labor-force-participation-drops-absence-paid-parental-leave-keeps-women-out-jobs-2124175), revealing that the American economy is functioning well below its potential. In addition wage stagnation, and the latest revelation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that earlier job creation figures were highly exaggerated (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/02/445244030/economy-adds-142-000-jobs-unemployment-steady-at-5-1-percent), demonstrates that even the U.S. economy, supposedly the healthiest on the planet, is manifesting growing signs of structural weakness.

In the wake of the global economic and financial crisis of 2008, policymakers in major economies made a bet on the same financial sector that unleashed the worldwide systemic disaster. Their decision was to engage in massive, unprecedented fiscal indebtedness and monetary loosening to prop up the investment and commercial banks, in the hope that this would stimulate reinvestment in the general economy ("main street") and revive sustainable economic growth. There is growing evidence that this gamble made by decision makers in the world's major economies is faltering. With staggering levels of sovereign debt, and central banks across the developed world having expanded their balance sheets almost to the point of infinity, the policymakers are left only with hopes and prayers that another massive crisis does not strike on their watch.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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3 Reasons Wantrepreneurs Fail at Entrepreneurship

October 3, 2015, 1:23 pm

≫ Next: Bigger Logos Make You Look Smaller

≪ Previous: Global Economy Increasingly Vulnerable To Another Financial Shock

Being an entrepreneur is a fascination many wantrepreneurs want to see themselves being included within. They see all the attention and glamour surrounding the field of entrepreneurship and lustfully want to be included in all the celebration. What they don't account for however, is the long process of work that goes into building your entrepreneurial foundation.

This foundation I speak of is not even the wild success blinded wantrepreneurs seek to possess. This foundation instead, is the right organization of activities that provide you with some form of positive return for your efforts.

The lack of understanding about the entrepreneurial process and the non-development of a strong entrepreneurial foundation; is what causes many wantrepreneurs to crash and burn before they even gain traction as an entrepreneur. Speaking of which, let's take a closer look and find out what exactly makes wantrepreneurs fail at entrepreneurship.

1. Believing Entrepreneurship is for Everybody
Unfortunately, a lot of people will unapologetically sell you the idea that you can be an entrepreneur because they are trying to sell you a product or service. You in turn believe the hype and start to think you are the next Mark Zuckerberg or Richard Branson.

It just doesn't work like that. Entrepreneurship, as I mentioned, is a process of actions. That means it doesn't produce immediate results due to you taking part in some online course or reading a book. If you are not committed to understanding the process and fine tuning your actions to be effective in producing results; you will never succeed within entrepreneurship.

2. Putting Themselves First
Coming with the I produce it, they will buy it approach is a very bad mindset to possess. Being so arrogant and misguided will quickly humble the foolish person who believes this thinking will work in their favor.

Wantrepreneurs never dig deep enough to understand how to effectively penetrate their intended marketplace. All they see is what can be in it for them and put together some poorly informed plan that just fuels their dreams; rather than satisfying a need or problem for the consumer.

3. Unable to Learn & Adjust
What really leads to many wantrepreneurs demise, is their failure to recognize and address the first two points outlined. Their excuse is that it is everybody but them. And they are right. Everybody recognizes their lousy attempts at being an entrepreneur but them.

Entrepreneurship is a world of constant learning, where even the successful entrepreneurs understand this as fact. Your inability to recognize your mistakes and to readjust your actions will lead you to a fate of perpetual failure. Choose to stay ignorant and your lack of entrepreneurial success will remain non-existent and you continuing to be clueless as to why such is the case.

Can you be included on this list of outlined behavior? If so, take the time now to really learn about entrepreneurship in order to determine if it is truly for you. Don't remain a wantrepreneur. Either graduate to being an entrepreneur or find another profession that you can better serve within.

Enjoyed this post? Go to Entrepreneurial Ambitions for similar post.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Bigger Logos Make You Look Smaller

October 3, 2015, 4:14 pm

≫ Next: Innovation With Purpose

≪ Previous: 3 Reasons Wantrepreneurs Fail at Entrepreneurship

It seems that the less people really know about marketing the more they think they know. While this is true of many other subjects too, it is particularly true of marketing. Despite lacking knowledge, experience, and evidence, too many truly believe that their intuition is as good as anyone else's. The more knowledge marketers acquire, the more they learn that much of effective marketing is counterintuitive. This is particularly true of an issue that has arisen quite a lot lately with clients and students - logo size. The uninitiated believe that when it comes to logo size and placement, bigger is better. Effective marketers, graphic designers, and psychologists know this is not true.

What's too big?

When it comes to determining the right size of a logo, it is typically inappropriate to talk about actual measurements. What is appropriate is the size of the logo relative to the other elements of the communication. A properly sized logo should not be bigger than the headline or main message that conveys the benefits of the product or subject being promoted. In fact, if you look at the logos of most professional, classy, and successful companies, you will find that the logos are not big, gaudy, or outsized. They are understated. They prefer to use the space to help you understand why you should buy their products.

What's wrong with too big?

A logo that is too big comes with a lot of negative baggage including the following:

Inside-out thinking. Successful companies put the customer first and convey that to the customer. Making the logo bigger than the customer benefit tells your customer that you are more important than they are.

Visual equivalent of shouting. Humans learn quite early that those with greater knowledge and confidence don't have to shout. People are drawn to them. They do not act as if they are selling "snake oil" or ice to Eskimos.

Insecure. Marketing psychologists know that shouting is often a manifestation of insecurity. If your product as good, there is no need to use gimmicks or shouting to sell it.

Distracting. Most buyers are interested in what your company or products can do for them. They are more attracted to information that conveys the benefits to them. Big logos distract them from the main message.

Waste space. Logos that are too big take space away from the benefits that are more important to the buyers. They also fill up white space necessary to give greater importance to the message.

Proper logo placement

Some companies compound the mistake of making their logo too big by putting it in the wrong places. In print ads, brochures, or other print communications, the proper location of logos is in the "signature" of the communication along with the name and slogan. In Western cultures where people read left to right, top to bottom, the proper location is the bottom middle or bottom right of the communication. Even so, some companies put logos at the top of these communications, or even worse, in the headline. Putting a logo in a headline is an inside out, product-driven "speed bump" that interferes with the reader's ability to learn and remember the main message conveyed in the headline.

On Web sites, letterhead, and business cards, the best location for logos (and accompanying names and slogans) is the upper left corner. These are corporate identity vehicles that may go longer than one page in the case of letters and one screen in the case of Web pages. Hence it is necessary to put the same discreetly-sized logo in the upper left corner where it is less likely to interfere with other parts of the communication.

Pay attention to logo implementations

To learn the importance of understating logos, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of logos by companies of different sizes, types, and levels of success. You will find exceptions, but you will also learn that companies with the better reputations (IBM, Xerox, Mont Blanc, Ritz Carlton, Tesla) have understated logos.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Innovation With Purpose

October 13, 2015, 1:09 pm

≫ Next: 50 Plus Workers Need to Embrace Technology

≪ Previous: Bigger Logos Make You Look Smaller

This week I ran a Marketing Innovation Summit for one of our clients. I always enjoy pushing clients out of their comfort zone and out of their own industries to think differently about their businesses.

It's my job. #MarketingInnovationDay.

For me personally, the magic happens when I always end up learning something in the process as well.

I suppose it's proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Given the hashtag used, you might guess that the topic was innovation in marketing, which of course can take many forms. So we had brand representatives from three different industries speak about their form of marketing innovation.

We wanted different thoughts on what innovation is about so that we could give our audience more to chew on, so to speak.

One spoke about iterative innovation, one spoke about digital innovation, and one spoke about creative innovation.

Three sides to a coin if you will.

But I did find a common theme emerging that carried across all three perspectives, and it was a bit of an AHA moment for me.

Innovation for innovation's sake lacks purpose. Just like technology for technology's sake lacks any meaning. It just becomes idle noise that customers don't absorb, or can't embrace, or quite frankly won't buy. Customers don't get it because it all sounds the same.

But when innovation has purpose, that's quite another story.

AHA.

When innovation is filling a need gap or solving a problem or enhancing an experience then it becomes innovation that is tangible and real.

It becomes, well, innovation. YES!

So how can you tell when you're on to something with your innovation?

It's quite simple, actually, and it's a good test for you to use whenever you are leveraging a new innovation in creativity, technology, or process.

Ask yourself this question: are you talking about the innovation itself or are you talking about the impact it has on your customer?

AHA.

If you are talking about the features and gadgets and gizmos of the innovation then you are likely wasting your marketing efforts. There's likely not much true innovation in any of that, and quite frankly nothing that will really get noticed or make much of a difference. Just being honest.

But if instead you are talking about the result it creates, then you have true meaningful innovation. If you are talking about the experience people will have, then you have innovation with purpose.

Then and only then will you have innovation that rises above the features and sets you apart.

Until you can answer that question, then I would argue you don't have innovation.

Only then will you too have an AHA moment with your customer.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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50 Plus Workers Need to Embrace Technology

October 13, 2015, 1:11 pm

≫ Next: Before You Help Others, You Must First Help Yourself

≪ Previous: Innovation With Purpose

In the new Robert DeNiro movie, where the seasoned actor plays a 70-year-old job intern at a tech company inhabited by mobs of with-it Millennials, CEO Ann Hathaway notes that he's on Facebook.

"Yeah. I joined about 10 minutes ago," DeNiro says.

In my book 50 Plus! Critical Career Decisions for the Rest of Your Life I point out that if you're a 50-plus job-hunter in the 21st century that just doesn't cut it. You have to be online, with a solid and informative presentation for yourself, whether you like the social media/Internet world or not.

Your Facebook page or LinkedIn profile, which people may view before they ever meet you, conveys a lot of information about you. And unlike Google, which can ambush you in unexpected ways, they will allow you to control what people see there. (And if you don't have an online presence? That also sends a message.)

A few years ago, posting your résumé online seemed like a downright dangerous thing to do. Today, posting your résumé online at sites like LinkedIn makes it possible for people to find you.

Although LinkedIn does have a job board, the primary reasons for joining are that it ties you into a constantly-increasing professional network, brings you to the attention of people you might not have thought to contact, and makes it easy for people to connect with you. It also allows you to establish and define an online profile that is specifically geared to your professional goals.

Many people also create their own websites, which gives even more control and can display examples of your best work. You can link to it from Facebook or LinkedIn, or from your online résumé, and drive traffic to a portfolio that really shines.

As for Facebook, it seems more casual, so you may be tempted to dismiss its importance in a job search. But employers in increasing numbers are likely to look up your Facebook page. From their point of view, it's a way to learn something about you without actually having to set up an interview. So make sure that your Facebook page represents you well. And if you don't have a Facebook page? I wish I could say it doesn't matter. Today, it does.

Conventional wisdom says that eighty percent of the jobs that you hear about will come directly from people you know. Given the rising dominance and range of online networking, I would not be surprised if the actual number turned out to be even higher.

Until recently, expanding your network meant establishing connections with as many people as possible and handing them your card. It was a slow process that favored the extrovert. Then along came Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media, and everything changed. Extroverts still have an easier time, but being an introvert isn't the same liability online that it is at a party. Even if you're shy, cultivating a strong online presence is a good way to expand your network.

People who are resistant to the computer - and most of those people are north of 50 - are making a gigantic mistake. If you're not up to speed technologically, you don't stand a chance. At minimum, that means being comfortable with a computer, a smartphone, and possibly a tablet or e-reader. It means being at least somewhat acquainted with social media, understanding the rules of email and texting, and being able to navigate your way around the Internet without begging a teenager for help.

Is it easy? Frankly, no. But understand: Coming across as a Luddite is not charming. It brands you as someone who cannot keep up and, in many cases, it irritates people. Who wants to be in that position?

If you have to take a course or hire a tutor to keep up with current technology, do not hesitate to do so.

Robert DeNiro succeeds in The Intern because the script was written that way.

With your online presence, it's up to you to write your own script, and write it for success.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Before You Help Others, You Must First Help Yourself

October 13, 2015, 1:12 pm

≫ Next: 5 Ways to Maximize Your 'Time ROI'

≪ Previous: 50 Plus Workers Need to Embrace Technology

The cabin shakes and rumbles.

Lights go out and smoke fills the air.

Flight attendants yell, "Heads down! Stay down!"

The excruciating tension builds, and then the plane lands.

Then finally, flight attendants direct you toward the emergency slide.

No, I didn't endure a plane crash and live to tell about it.

Rather, in my previous life working for a major airline, I had the chance to experience the flight attendant safety training, first hand.

Yeah, it is intense. It shakes you up even though you know it's just a training exercise.

Much of that experience has stuck with me, especially the lesson I learned from one of the airline's security videos:

"Before you assist others, always put your oxygen mask on first."

Whenever I ask my clients what kind of person they want to become, they ultimately all want to make an impact on the lives of others.

I think that is true to all of us. We want to make a difference, to be somebody, and to know our lives mean something.

But, I've learned from my experiences that helping others is almost impossible to achieve if you are going through turbulence in your life or career.

If your current situation is unstable, how can you possibly help others?

Your job, first and foremost, is to help yourself and take care of your own needs. That's why the flight attendants encourage you to secure your oxygen mask first. If you don't, you and the person you want to help could both go down.

Put your oxygen mask on first.

What this means with regard to your career is to take care of yourself.

Be healthy.
Be happy.
Be organized.
Be financially stable.
Be independent.
Be cultured.
Be confident.
Be in peace.
Be knowledgeable.
Be calm.
Be centered.
Be content.

Here's a challenge for you: For 21 consecutive days, do one thing to take care of yourself.

It can be the same action for 21 days or a different one every day. Record it by writing down on your calendar or in your digital calendar.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Sleep 8 eight hours a night.
Wake up 30 minutes earlier than the day before.
Workout 30 minutes a day.
Go to yoga.
Meditate.
Eat breakfast.
Bring lunch to work.
Take a walk around the office.
Say no to something you don't want to do.
Say yes to something you haven't done before.
Get a massage.
Get a facial.
Get a manicure and pedicure.
Get a haircut.
Clean your room.
Organize a drawer.
Throw out extra clothes.
Wash your sheets.
Clean your refrigerator.
Read 10 pages of a book.
Read a blog.
Read a magazine.
Study your hero.
See a movie.
Go to the library.
Cook a new recipe.
Play the guitar.
Dance to the radio.
Sing to your favorite song.
Call your mom.
Call your dad.
Call your siblings.
Call your best friend.
Set auto pay for your bills.
Put $20 in your savings account.
Write an entry in your gratitude journal.
Send a thank you card.
Shine your shoes.
Cuddle with your cat.
Walk your dog.
Water your plants.
Buy flowers.
Hug your neighbor.
Paint.
Smile.
Laugh out loud.
Take a deep breath.
Tell yourself, "I love you."
... and many more

On the 21st day, answer the questions below so that you can see the transitions you made by focusing on your own happiness.

What changes did you notice in yourself?

What lessons did you learn?

Do you feel happier and more at ease in your own life?

Celebrate your accomplishment of taking care of yourself for 21 days in a row!

Get your own oxygen mask on so that you can assist others. It has to be done in that order. Don't fight the order or you will end up burned out with no energy left for yourself.

You need to get out of that cycle.

Often, it begins with saying "no" to others and "yes" to yourself.

Accountability time! Share in the comments below which of the suggestions you will start with. Or, add your own suggestion to the list.

--

Nozomi Morgan, MBA, is a certified Executive Coach and the Founder and President of Michiki Morgan Worldwide LLC. Addition to coaching, she speaks and trains on leadership, career, professional development and cross-cultural business communication.

Visit www.nozomimorgan.com to learn more about Nozomi . There, you can download the free Leadership Discovery Tool. Follow Nozomi on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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5 Ways to Maximize Your 'Time ROI'

October 13, 2015, 1:14 pm

≫ Next: Why Small Businesses Can't Get Ahead in the Game

≪ Previous: Before You Help Others, You Must First Help Yourself

Having freedom of time is a big reason we became entrepreneurs. We want to spend our hours doing what we love to do professionally, while also having enough time away from the business to pursue our other passions.

Unfortunately, we usually end up working "half time" -- meaning 12 hours a day instead of the entire 24.

The good news: We can take back our time-crunched lives and enjoy the time freedom we desperately crave. So says Elizabeth Saunders -- time investment expert, founder of Real Life E Time Coaching & Training, and author of How to Invest Your Time Like Money.

Here are five of Saunders' top strategies for gaining control of your limited time and leveraging it for maximum impact on your business and your life.

1. Take an ownership mindset with your time. So often we give up our control over time and make our business a much worse boss than we would ever work for in the corporate world. The solution is to view time as something you own rather than something that owns you. "If you don't believe that you can be successful and work a reasonable number of hours, you won't. You'll find plenty of ways to keep yourself busy," notes Saunders.

Indeed, as a senior executive at a company I once worked for, I had four assistants, but there was always a line of people outside of my door. Until I took ownership of my time, I was highly unproductive.

One way to view time using the right mindset is to separate success from suffering. Sure, we have to work hard and put in our dues. But stop taking that idea too far. "My own personal definition of success involves not only being successful professionally but also having time for my personal life," says Saunders. "If I can't have a business that also supports my personal life, I won't feel like a success, so I found a way to do this without making myself suffer in terms of my time."

2. Identify your major "time debts." When we feel stressed out and overwhelmed, it's usually because there's a disconnect between our expectations of what we can do and the actual amount of time there is to spend on those activities. We tend to think that by writing things down on a to-do list that we should be able to get it done, but it's not that simple. Just as we all have a finite amount of money to spend on things we want to buy, we only have 168 hours in a week to spend on getting things done.

So when you consider your time, think about the maintenance activities that need to be done for your life or business and how much time they require. Then you can think about the other projects that you want to get done. As you do the math, you'll see the big gap between the amount of time you have versus your expectations of what will get done. That's what causes the stress. You've put a goal into your life that you can't possibly achieve because you don't have the time to, in essence, pay for it.

3. Create a base schedule. To get out and stay out of time debt, create a base schedule -- a general budget for your time that gives you a sense of the hours that are pre-allocated to certain items and the hours that are available to use in other ways. Saunders recommends creating the schedule in the following order:

Self care. Start by scheduling time to sleep, exercise, spend with family and friends, or just be alone. This is the opposite of what most entrepreneurs do, of course. But if you're sleep deprived, for example, you are dramatically less productive. As an entrepreneur, it can be so easy to get so wrapped up in your business that you forget about the things outside of your business that will support you in your efforts -- if you invest in them.

Business care. Schedule the key elements of the tasks you do -- be they emails, meetings, strategic planning, or specific projects. Think about the ideal allocation of your time to each task and commit them to the calendar.

The idea is to create a basic structure for your "time portfolio" that provides boundaries and parameters for how you spend time (just as you might create a basic asset allocation for an investment portfolio). This helps you stay on track instead of simply reacting to things as they appear.

4. Make automatic time investments. As with automatic investments into retirement accounts, you want to make automatic investments into your time bank by making habits and routines out of the regular occurrences in your life.

Example: You might schedule your exercise at 7:00 a.m. every day for 30 minutes. That way, you don't have to think about when to do it or how to squeeze it in. It's simply there. Same goes for big business goals. You might schedule 60-minute strategy sessions on the same day and time each week. And for the things that can't necessarily be scheduled on a daily or weekly recurring basis, the routines of daily and weekly planning help you to make sure that you're fitting them in. "Make as many things habits as possible. By having your daily and weekly planning in place, you can adjust and recalibrate for those more one-off activities that inevitably crop up," says Saunders.

5. Invest in high ROI activities, and outsource the rest. Manage your time so you spend most of it on the activities that drive value in your business -- such as business development or writing proposals. This sounds obvious, but all too often entrepreneurs get caught up trying to do everything themselves and end up spending too much time on administrative or other relatively low-value tasks that don't boost revenues and profits. Learn to let go of those low-value areas and delegate them to others inside or outside the firm. Then you can invest the time you've got in the big payoff areas.

Build a great business and a great life -- on purpose and on your terms. Check out AES Nation for elite insights and actionable strategies from top entrepreneurs.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Why Small Businesses Can't Get Ahead in the Game

October 13, 2015, 1:15 pm

≫ Next: A Hidden Risk You Never Saw Coming

≪ Previous: 5 Ways to Maximize Your 'Time ROI'

They are the hardest working Americans, operating their own business, trying to push themselves forward, but somehow they just can't catch a break.

Small businesses - we see them in every town: specialty shops, deli restaurants, hair & nail salons, yoga studios and so many more. We know the owners by name; we see how they interact with their customers and support their community.

According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, small businesses are crucial to continuous job creation in the U.S economy. Since 1995, small businesses have created two of every three jobs - 65 percent of total net job creation. (Mills and McCarthy, 2014). However, the Washington Post is quoting a new 2014 Brookings Institution report indicating that businesses are shutting their doors more quickly than new ones are popping up.

So what is going wrong? Are we, as a society, failing small businesses? Do we look the other way when small businesses shut their doors?

Seeking answers, I met with Jack Elaad, a seasoned banking executive and former Chairman of FIBI (one of Israel's top 5 national banks). For many years Jack has had a first-row seat as a banking industry insider, watching the financial game up-close and personal. "As an insider", Jack reflects, "I observed all the hurdles small-business owners faced on their path to getting a simple loan approved". Jack views this phenomenon as a systematic malfunction, as an injustice.

At the time, he didn't understand the lack of support for the growth of small business in the financial industry. Calling him a 'modern day Robin-Hood' for small business owners makes him smile... But professionally, Jack knew something had to be done to shake up the financial system and create new hope for hard-working business owners. This notion led him to become the Co-Founder of Credithood, a FinTech startup looking to address the economic pain of Main Street, U.S.A. We discussed the reasons small businesses can't get ahead in the game in today's market.

Says Elaad - "The reality is that when a small business is looking to grow and seeks funding from banks, they get turned down. In fact, most SMB loan applications are declined by traditional banks. Only few business are found eligible for a loan. Very few".

Those 'lucky' ones then have to face the most stringent terms there are, often such that they can't afford to take: they have to provide personal assurance, they have to pay high interest rates, and they only qualify for short loan repayment terms. Clearly, not a good deal for small businesses.
Why does it happen? Elaad: "One of the key reasons is that traditional banks have a very high processing cost for each loan, regardless of the loan amount, as they process every loan the same way. A loan for half a million dollars is going through the same process as a loan for $10,000. Therefore, banks will prefer offering better terms to the larger-amount borrowers, leaving the smaller businesses with the less desirable terms".

Another factor is the business-profile test that banks examine, which is misleading for small businesses. Instead of looking at the business reputation, they look at credit scores. Instead of looking into the customer base, satisfaction and loyalty, they look at cash reserves.
Sadly, traditional banks do not see small businesses the way they could be looked at - as community- backed businesses where owners work hard for customer appreciation and loyalty.
The criteria for small-business loans should be based on past success and future potential of the business, based on the vote of confidence and trust it gets from its loyal customers, suggest Elaad. "This is why we created Credithood".

Jack assures me that the revolution in this space is coming soon, starting with Credithood's launch earlier this month in New York.

More about what small businesses are currently doing in order to seek funding online - in the coming blog post.

Stay tuned!

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A Hidden Risk You Never Saw Coming

October 13, 2015, 2:01 pm

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Ken Griffin is a hedge fund manager with an enviable net worth of $7 billion. According to published reports, he recently settled a contentious divorce dispute with his wife, Anne Dias Griffin, shortly before it was scheduled to go to trial.

There was a lot at stake. His wife claimed Griffin earned an unbelievable $100 million a month!

Why should you care?

Marital events can adversely affect returns

I don't understand the fascination that investors, including pension and endowment funds, have for hedge funds. As my colleague, Larry Swedroe, noted, for the 10-year period from 2005-2014, the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index underperformed every major stock and bond asset class.

You might think this data would dissuade most investors. Clearly, this is not happening. According to data from the HFR Global Hedge Fund Industry Report, investors allocated $21.5 billion in net new capital to hedge funds in the second quarter of 2015. Total hedge fund assets globally are $2.97 trillion.

If historical underperformance isn't enough, a recent study adds another concern. The study examined 31,542 hedge funds, 18,295 of which were "live" and 13,247 of which were "dead." It found that hedge fund managers significantly underperform while undergoing a divorce. The underperformance is significant. In the six-month period surrounding a divorce, hedge fund managers underperform by 4.33 percent per year compared to the pre-divorce period. During the same six-month period, fund alpha declined by 7.39 percent per year.

Moreover, this underperformance persisted beyond that six-month period. The funds continued to underperform by a risk-adjusted 2.29 percent per year up to two years post-divorce.

That's already pretty bad, but it gets even worse. The study also found that, during the six-month period surrounding a marriage, "fund alpha falls by 8.50 percent per annum." Both marriage and divorce, it appears, are major life events that distract hedge fund managers from their focus on investments.

Effects of distraction

The authors of the study found the distraction of marriage and divorce caused hedge fund managers to make fewer investment decisions. They were more likely to mimic the risk loadings of their "investment style peers" and to increase their allocation to stocks in the S&P 500 index.

Distracted fund managers also made poorer investment decisions and exercised less discipline. They were more likely to hold onto their losses and realize gains during periods in which they were distracted.

Ramifications of this study

While this study was limited to hedge funds, the findings could have far-ranging implications. Do they apply to all actively managed funds? What about alternative investments? Do they apply to brokers and financial advisors? What about other major life events, like the birth of a child? What about other traumatic events, like a health crisis, death of a loved one or the divorce of a close relative?

Evidence-based investors don't have to worry much about these issues. Most of the work managing index funds is computer based, since the mandate of such funds is simply to track the returns of the benchmark index.

If you need another reason to abandon active management, maybe the potential for your fund manager to be distracted by life events will be the tipping point.

Dan Solin is a New York Times bestselling author of the Smartest series of books, including The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read, The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read and his latest, The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read.

The views of the author are his alone and may not represent the views of his affiliated firms. Any data, information and content on this blog is for information purposes only and should not be construed as an offer of advisory services.

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Work Life: 3 Ways to Do More Better

October 13, 2015, 2:09 pm

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If you run anything from a two-person team to a large organization, "doing more with less" isn't just an annoying cliché; it's reality. Until AI's and robots are running the world, we humans are called upon to be ever more scalable, which boils down to three related themes:

1) Increasing your workload capacity without giving up more of your life

2) Enhancing your time management (e.g., meetings, emails, work time, think time)

3) Improving the quality of your output, product, service, and/or outcomes

These scalability improvements often need to happen during tough times. Almost everyone faces challenges with recruiting, administration, expense and revenue pressures, etc. Yet these are often the times enhancing scalability can make the difference between surviving and thriving.

Here's What Works

If you're anything like my coaching clients, you're wondering, "Okay, so now what?" Here are three levers that I've repeatedly found help people upgrade their scalability.

1. Recruit/retain high capability/capacity/potential people, eliminate hurdles in their way, and let them run

Select and retain people who care a lot about what they do, the quality with which they do it, their ability to work without heavy supervision, and good attitudes about helping each other. Have the courage to look at your people through this lens, and, after giving reasonable support and opportunities, eliminate those who fall short without undue delay.

Once you have the right person, let them run--give them responsibility and authority. Look at what you're holding on to doing yourself and/or micromanaging what they're doing, and offload offload offload to them. Create good ways for them to keep you updated on the important things and implement/enhance your standards about when you need to be involved versus informed.

Ask and listen to your key people regularly regarding: 1) their workload in relation to their capacity, 2) their ability to prioritize quality over quantity, 3) their willingness/capacity to help out their colleagues, and 4) what hurdles you can remove that are getting in their way. Failure to do this is a failure of leadership; so if it's been a while, you may want to try it with a few of your people and see what you learn.

2. Discern when a great idea is a distraction rather than a great addition, without missing the next big thing

It's way easier to come up with great ideas than to discern whether or not it's worthwhile to do them. Many of my clients are faced every week with a truckload of shiny new ones that sound like, "We should be doing that," "Why aren't we doing that?", "Wouldn't it be cool if we could...", "We need to take a look at that," and "They're doing that, so shouldn't we?"

Great people want to do it all and are inclined to say "yes" too often. Yet there's already a vision and roadmap ongoing, thank you very much. Yessing too much creates churn, confusion, role/responsibility fuzziness and an inability to deliver on priorities. After all, if you take on everything you'll get nothing done and distract everyone. Take on nothing and you miss the next big thing, or at least risk getting out of date with what clients, customers, or constituents need or want.

I recommend my clients consider three standards when the next idea or fire drill shows up:

Discovery without derailment: Can this idea be evaluated for return on investment or expectations without derailing the current path?

Steadfastness of vision and roadmap: If your vision and roadmap are solid, is there a compelling reason to add this to it?

Openness to changing the game: Regardless of the above, is this idea likely in a relevant timeframe to change the game, and therefore do we need to change our vision and roadmap?

If the result of those standards is not to pursue an idea, no matter how compelling, it's necessary to say "no" in ways the right people can absorb, which, ironically, is usually "Yes, and..." followed by "here's what we would have to stop doing or cut back on if we did it." That's often easier than "No" to something that seems or sounds fabulous.

3. Own your calendar and time, rather than be owned by them

I ask my clients to, 1) add modest blocks of sacred (i.e., non-changeable) time to their calendar daily or several times a week to think and reflect, 2) define when, outside of work, they will do work, and stick with it, 3) identify a handful of priorities each week, and stick with them, and 4) stop letting things get added to their calendar without passing a few tests:

Will your participation in this add value to your current highest priorities, those of a colleague, and/or those of the organization overall?

Is it something that can be done virtually rather than take up a chunk of time?

Will it speed up, slow down, or have a neutral impact to the current vision and/or roadmap?

* * *

There are many suggestions here, and I never recommend someone try and do all of them. That said, if you find something here you think may be useful, I encourage you to try it, and let me (or someone in your world) know what you discover. I think you'll no doubt find it value-added for you and potentially your organization overall.

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Holding Big Pharma Accountable: Why Suing the Pharmaceutical Industry Isn't Working

October 13, 2015, 2:25 pm

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Flickr/Creative Commons/Derek Gavey

Since early September, we've seen five major pharmaceutical companies in the news for not disclosing known risks of certain drugs. Here's snapshot of the most recent legal action pertaining to Big Pharma:

Makers of antidepressant Paxil paid out $3 billion in fines for -- among other misdeeds -- illegally persuading doctors to prescribe the drug to children and teenagers despite internal evidence that it's ineffective and can trigger suicidal thoughts in adolescents.

Two manufacturers of low testosterone therapy, marketed as a "fountain of youth", have been sued for not disclosing increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Makers of Actos, a diabetes drug, failed to inform consumers and medical professionals about the risk of bladder cancer associated with use -- for which they paid out $2.34 billion in settlements.

The manufacturer of Zoloft, an antidepressant, has been accused of ignoring internal red flags -- and not warning consumers -- about potential heart defects in newborns.

And Johnson and Johnson and Bayer Corp. are being sued based on allegations that they deliberately concealed the blood thinner Xarelto's potential fatal side effect of internal bleeding. They've also been in ongoing litigation for potentially hiding known information about male breast growth resulting from the antipsychotic Risperdal.

These cases aren't anomalies. In 2012, Bayer paid $110 million to settle allegations that some consumers experienced fatal blood clots when using the oral contraceptive Yasmin. In 2010, makers of diabetes drug Avandia agreed to pay $460 million to settle 10,000 lawsuits whose plaintiffs claimed the company hid its heart attack risks. In 2008, the manufacturer of the painkiller Vioxx paid out $4.85 billion to settle 50,000 claims that users suffered heart attacks and strokes.

Yet these drugs each racked up billions in sales. The persistence of Big Pharma's fraud despite ubiquitous legal action suggests that our present efforts to hold the industry accountable are ineffective.

Why?

1. Because lawsuits often end in settlement

Phoenix personal injury lawyer Jeffrey Phillips explained, "I represent dozens of plaintiffs in actions against pharmaceutical companies, but 99 percent of these cases settle." That's usually good news for individuals -- who can avoid expensive trials, collect their damages and hopefully resume their lives -- but it's bad news for changing the way Big Pharma does business.

Settlements silence: By avoiding the publicity of trials, Big Pharma buries facts that could harm their reputation and cut profits. As long as earnings far outweigh the sum of settlement fines, pharmaceutical companies will continue to regard such payments as merely "the cost of doing business".

"What we're learning is that money doesn't deter corporate malfeasance," said New York's attorney general Eliot Spitzer, who was involved in the Paxil case.

2. Because the Supreme Court doesn't hold Big Pharma liable

If they didn't settle, consumers with even strong cases would probably lose at trial.

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "if the FDA says a drug is safe, that takes precedent over actual facts, real victims and any and all adverse reactions." But since research is often either funded or conducted by Big Pharma, and companies are able and willing to conceal serious side effects, the FDA can't accurately determine whether a drug is safe.

The ruling furthermore made all U.S. generic drugs -- which compose 80 percent of the market -- exempt from liability for side effects.

3. Because FDA policies prioritize innovation over safety and sense

Since the 1990s, Congress has implemented four programs to expedite the approval process for new, exceptional pharmaceuticals. These pathways were created to push innovative, life-saving drugs for rare conditions through the FDA more quickly using preliminary, substandard research.

In 2014, 46 percent of new drugs that hit the market received expedited approval. The F.D.A is now the fastest regulatory agency in the world for new drugs, approving 96 percent of all never-before-marketed pharmaceuticals.

Innovation sounds good -- except when it means cutting corners during research and a surplus of nearly identical drugs.

Two new studies by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that, while more drugs are indeed getting to market, the percentage of truly innovative products has decreased. Other studies have similarly found that, since the mid-1990s, roughly "85 to 90 percent of new drugs don't offer any clinical advantages for users".

As latent exposed side effects of novel drugs fill the news, we have to wonder if approving half of them based on shoddy evidence serves our health.

-----

New polices in motion will make potentially unsafe drugs even easier to bring to market and promote.

In July, the House passed the 21st Century Cures Act, backed by Big Pharma, by a 344-77 vote. According to Vox, critics argue that its language could "weaken the quality of evidence the FDA uses to evaluate new drugs and devices, making it easier for companies to bring substandard or dangerous medicines and medical devices to patients." "The 19th Century Frauds Act", as Harvard professor Daniel Carpenter calls parts of it, enables: device companies to use anecdotes as valid, sufficient scientific evidence that a medical device works; drug companies to submit animal studies in lieu of clinical -- human -- trials to prove antibiotics' efficacy and safety; and doctors to be paid by pharmaceutical companies for certain incentives without disclosing them.

With new FDA commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf, who has "deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any F.D.A. commissioner in recent memory", we risk making the FDA a puppet for Big Pharma.

The Boston Globe summarizes:

If companies can boost their drugs without the same degree of regulatory scrutiny, and if doctors in turn push more medicines on their patients, consumers might be left wondering what to believe and whom to trust.

And, if we've learned anything from decades of Big Pharma hide-and-seek, it's that what we don't know hurts us.

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ConvHERsations: Jo Piazza (VIDEO)

October 13, 2015, 2:43 pm

≫ Next: Pay It Forward Through Intentional Living & Heal the World

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ConvHERsations is a weekly webisode series produced by GenHERation that features interviews with female executives. This week Jo Piazza discusses her work as the Managing Editor of Yahoo Travel and a bestselling author.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Pay It Forward Through Intentional Living & Heal the World

October 13, 2015, 3:16 pm

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Life often seems to take on a pace all its own. We find ourselves in full "go" mode from the second our alarm rings. We gulp down our morning coffee that was programmed the night before. After all, who has the time to wait for it to brew with a zillion other things that need to get done before we race out the door?

As I write this blog, literally before the crack of dawn, I sense the clock tick, tick, ticking away. Time is moving on and I have so much more to do within the next thirty minutes.

Racing through life as if it is a mad dash to the finish life, (and nobody is more guilty of this than me), we miss many of its simple pleasures. We lose sight of the fact that living life is about people -- not "to do" lists.

We lose the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of others because we get so caught up in our own. We inadvertently miss countless opportunities to "stop and smell the roses" as we hurriedly race through the garden of life.

Sadly, we risk losing the very purpose of life -- to build authentic genuine relationships with others!

We're all familiar with the expression:

Now imagine living your life displaying Intentional Acts of Kindness!

John C. Maxwell's new book: "Intentional Living" talks about making a difference in the lives of others. And it doesn't require a whole lot of time!

Maxwell describes acts of kindness as "intentional living". Living your life by intentionally incorporating small acts of kindness towards others. These intentional kind behaviors make people feel loved and appreciated, and the world a better place.

Intentionally holding the door open for others as you rush in and out of a store; calling a friend whom you've lost touch with just to say hello; letting the people you care about know how much they mean to you.

These deliberate acts of kindness are the types of behaviors John Maxwell talks about when describing the concept of intentional living.

When you intentionally live your life performing one act of kindness towards someone, they, in turn, will pay it forward.

Making the world a better place -- one intentional act of kindness at a time!

Be intentional and see what John C. Maxwell's "Intentional Living" has in store for you. Click this link now.

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Bullying in the Workplace and its Consequences

October 13, 2015, 3:23 pm

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The Internet is full of advice on how to be successful in the workplace. How to develop one's social skills; what to say, what to do, what to wear, what not to say, what not to do, what not to wear. All of this advice focuses on what the employee needs to do to adapt to his or her workplace. What all of this rhetoric fails to recognize or acknowledge, is to what extent the environment of the workplace affects one's efforts, productivity, and career, as well as the productivity of the organization as a whole.

The 1970s and 80s were characterized by combatting sexual harassment in the workplace, with the popular TV show Mad Men bringing home to us the elevated sexism (and alcoholism) that permeated the business world of the 50s and 60s. But, now after a few decades of high-profile, million dollar law-suits by high-priced lawyers, employers have been forced to take a hard-line against sexual harassment. However, as with all battles involving abuses of power, this issue has involved over the decades into a broader fight -- bullying being the problem du jour.

Unfortunately, identifying and dealing with bullying is much more difficult for employers (and lawyers looking for lawsuits) than the more overt forms of sexual and physical harassment of the past -- even though the objectives, power and control over the victim, are the same.

In order to effectively combat bullying, it is important to understand the dynamics of the situation rather than look for punctual, isolated incidents that may or may not constitute bullying. Bullies (and those with abusive personality disorders wherever they be found) are motivated by their desire to deflect attention away from their inability to handle situations, particularly stressful and crisis situations. They project their frustrations and inability to handle their jobs onto subordinates, while trying to convince superiors (as much as themselves) that the problems lay with the inadequacies or incompetence of others.

Large, bureaucratic organizations are particularly plagued with these problems, and exposed to their consequences. As Daniel Goleman states in Social Intelligence:

In rigid hierarchies' bosses tend to be authoritarian: they more freely express contempt for their subordinates, who in turn naturally feel a messy mix of hostility, fear, and insecurity. Insults, which can be routine with such authoritarian managers, serve to reaffirm the boss's power while leaving their subordinates feeling helpless and vulnerable... In a relationship among peers an affront can be challenged, an apology asked for. But when the insult comes from someone who holds all the power, subordinates (perhaps wisely) suppress their anger, responding with a resigned tolerance. But that very passivity-with the insult going unchallenged-tacitly confers permission to a superior in that vein... As the demeaning messages continue over time, the person holding back feels increasingly powerless, anxious, and ultimately depressed -- all of which, if prolonged over long periods, markedly increases the likelihood of cardiovascular diseases.

In light of Goleman's observations, it is important for employers to realize that it is not only the victim who suffers. Bullying in the workplace has far-reaching consequences for the productivity and morale of employees throughout the entire organization. When bullying is supported and encouraged by upper-management by their failure to act, valuable employees are often lost or demoralized into just "punching the clock", with ineffective managers at liberty to continue performing at substandard levels, and creating havoc and inertia amongst co-workers and subordinates.

In the business environment of the 21st century, which is increasingly competitive and filled with employees seeking fulfilling and meaningful work, it behooves employers to properly confront the bullies and bullying amongst their ranks. A bully, without the support and encouragement of those around him or her, quickly loses their nerve and bravado, and the coward within is thereby exposed and vanquished.

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