From the category archives:
Lewis Terman recognized the importance of intelligence when he pioneered his IQ tests in the early 1900s. In his opinion, nothing about an individual is as important as IQ, except possibly morals. I would agree, except to add that you need to be smart enough to do the job, not too much smarter than that. [...]
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Frequently I receive notice of a workshop or webinar that another consultant will offer. Since I once belonged to a human resources organization, my name appears on virtually every mailing list on the planet. Today I received an invitation to a webinar entitled “Managing Employees from Hell: Discipline That Gets Results.” Where do these companies [...]
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Last night I saw Moneyball, the blockbuster movie based on Michael Lewis’s best seller, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The movie has been successful for some obvious reasons, one being that Brad Pitt is not too hard to look at for two hours. But I liked it for an imperceptible one. It [...]
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As the old joke goes, a reporter asked a business owner, “How many people work here?” “About half,” he responded. Recent research indicates that estimate might have been too ambitious for today’s companies because many leaders reported that only about 29% of their workfoce shows signs of strong engagement. What do the other two thirds do? [...]
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Recent research indicates that only about 38% of employees use all their allotted vacation time, and it’s not the boss’s fault. Only about 5% of those in the survey said it was. So why don’t people take the time off they’re entitled to? One word—fear. With recent cuts to the labor force, people have developed [...]
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Last month the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Star Leaders National Student Conference took place in St. Louis, and the Army was involved. Why? According to Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakly, “Our nation faces critical challenges that threaten our ability to produce the healthy, highly educated and skilled workforce essential to remain competitive in a [...]
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The California Pitzer College has finally decided to step up and fill a void that has existed since colleges began. They will now offer a degree in atheism, which they will call “secular studies.” The sociologist behind the new Pitzer department, Phil Zuckerman, stated, “There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious, and [...]
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For more than a week, accounts of the heroic deeds of the Navy SEAL team have dominated the news. The acronym “SEAL” describes this special forces members’ abilities to operate in the sea or air and on the land, but their ability to work underwater truly separates the SEALs from most other military units. Navy SEALs [...]
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“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Andersen’s famous account outlines the story of two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that are invisible to those unfit, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” [...]
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Amy Chua’s new bestseller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, has stirred quite a controversy. According to Chua, raising successful children involves the strict discipline that she experienced as a child and that she advocates for western mothers. According to her, play dates, sleepovers, television, and sports waste the time of a child. Only academics [...]
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