Leaders & Managers

Good leaders acknowledge their limitations, then “open up themselves to others,” says leadership author and coach John Baldoni. “People want to work with a manager who knows what he can and cannot do.”

You expect colleges and universities to prepare your youngest workers for their new jobs. But are you prepared for them? These digital natives quickly grow impatient with last year’s hardware and software. Hiring them puts more pressure on your organization to keep its technology ahead of the curve.

On the Maersk Alabama, the captain’s cool head, long experience and clear sense of duty saved the ship from pirates off Africa’s east coast. To understand why it did end so well for Captain Richard Phillips and his crew, you have to go back to his days as a seaman learning by example that deeds count, not words.

Don’t ask your people to perform work they’re incapable of doing. “The only way you can truly appreciate what your team is or is not capable of is to see it firsthand or, better yet, do it yourself,” Mike Figliuolo says.

As Facebook writes its own rulebook, part of its culture is healthy dissent, especially when it comes with proof.

PowerPoint isn’t the only game in town. Our favorite alternatives to PowerPoint:  SlideRocket,  Google Docs and  Prezi.

Americans simply don’t know how to take a vacation. Only 57% of U.S. workers use all the vacation days they’re allotted, compared with 89% of workers in France, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found. How to turn it around? Try an “unlimited time off” policy.

In the simplest terms, strategy is about figuring out where to play and how to win to maximize long-term value. To define your business strategy, answer these three questions:

Every year, you probably receive (or help write) your performance evaluation. But have you really evaluated your job lately? Doing a “career audit” is a way of asking yourself: How is my position actually working for me? We talk you through the questions you need to ask yourself.

Say you're trying to use an Excel spreadsheet to track weekly wages for office employees. It's simple enough to create a formula (hours x hourly rate) that calculates wages for someone who works 40 hours or less. But what if someone works 45 hours one week?