Sometimes stories come along that just land in the wheelhouse. This article would be one of them – Study of the Day: Why Crowded Coffee Shops Fire Up Your Creativity. Hello. I don’t need a study to tell me this fact. In case you didn’t know: Compared to a relatively quiet environment (50 decibels), a moderate level of ambient noise (70 dB) enhanced subjects’ performance on the creativity tasks, while a high level of noise (85 dB) hurt it. Modest background noise, the scientists explain, creates enough of a distraction to encourage people to think more imaginatively. Which leads to this assertion: The next time you’re stumped on a creative… Read More
Continue ReadingManic First Monday
I got to start my first Monday of the new year without my laptop. It died over the weekend so I come to you via a desktop system that is not my “home.” It is a strange feeling being on another system. It seems like there should be a resolution in here somewhere. In that light, BusinessWeek.com went to the streets looking for input from managers. The survey was literally conducted walking the streets of Boston so keep that in mind. Two items were the winner: Managers want to find a better work/life balance. As you saw in the video, one person is working 16 hour days. So much for… Read More
Continue ReadingWork/Life Balance Has Reached Executives
BusinessWeek.com offers up a good summation of today’s hiring market in terms of executive recruitment. We could have wrote this article – it describes exactly what we are encountering in a couple of executive searches. Let’s unpack a couple points from the article: This new environment requires that executive headhunters and companies’ human resources and business leaders delve deeper into what’s really important to senior-management candidates and calibrate the recruitment process accordingly. Very true. Part of this understanding comes from assessing their motivations and rewards, the other part from interaction. Yesterday I posted on the need for flexibility when hiring since candidates desire work/life balance far more than in previous… Read More
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