Sure, folks are lined up twenty-deep at Macy’s, Target and Pier 1, but you….you’re smarter than that.  You’re avoiding the crushing, Visa-wielding masses  and doing your last-minute shopping at the local pawn shop.  That’s right, the pawn shop.  It’s the hippest new trend in holiday shopping, and there are many reasons why.  With over $52 [...]

Despite all the pepper spray, disheveled encampments and misplaced angst, is there something the modern organization can learn from the “occupy” movement?  If so, it would probably all fit neatly under the following categories: Don’t always fight fire with fire. If you’re confronted with shouting protesters on your way to work, shouting back only results [...]

A recent study by Columbia University suggests that being told you are smart as a fifth grader might not be good for your long-term career success.  In fact, kids who were told “you must be really smart” had a harder time than kids who were told “you must have worked really hard.” In the study, [...]

There Would Be No Thanksgiving without the Profit Motive By Lawrence W. Reed/MCPP   “The worst crime against working people,” so said Samuel  Gompers, “is a company which fails to operate at a profit.” Gompers, of course, is known by the history books as the father of  the labor  union movement in America. He was [...]

As hard as it may be to imagine, with daily news on the abysmal economy and rampant unemployment, some employers have a different jobs problem – too many jobs, and nobody to fill them.  Correction: nobody willing to fill them. In rural Alabama for instance – a state where a new immigration law has just [...]

Are there certain catch-phrases at your place of business that drift in and out of favor within the ranks of management? Maybe they’ve already made themselves familiar with “How To Speak Like A Business School Grad”,  as published this month by BusinesWeek.  Take the quiz below, and see how much vocabulary you share with a [...]

Money-back guarantees are nothing new – think pizza, the ubiquitous Snuggie, and various gizmos for sale on tv during Jeopardy – but a money-back guarantee for college graduates if they don’t get a job within six months?  Talk about a game-changer. Who’s behind this?  An illustrious ivy-league school, or maybe one of those scrappy I.T. [...]

A new study out this week indicates that your choice in internet browser indicates how smart you are. AptiQuant, a Canadian psychometric consulting company, just released their figures, and Internet Explorer users are not impressed. Out of seven possible browser options, IE users were shown to have the lowest I.Q. And the older the version [...]

Hollywood has documented the workplace villian – the Horrible Boss – in films like 1999′s cult classic Office Space, and this year’s film Horrible Bosses.  But do they exist outside of the big screen?  Apparently yes, based on responses to the AFL CIO’s Working America organization and their “My Bad Boss” contest. Presuming they are [...]

The internet is rife with stories about mistakes made using social media – that’s because as a workforce, we’re all still trying to figure out where the boundaries are.  The wrong time to find out where the boundaries are is after they’ve already been crossed, so what follows are some valuable tips regarding use of [...]