I like to point out idiocy by “experts” when I see it. And management writing in Harvard Business Review is usually such a fertile field! Today, let’s look at idiocy about luck and being a great strategist from Hans H. Hinterhuber and Wolfgang Popp (“Are You a Strategist or Just a Manager?”, Jan-Feb 1992).
As Moltke observed, the good strategist also needs good luck….
So, if we assum…
Did you ever stop and think of what that bad job, the one where you don’t fit and is so stressful, is doing to you long term? You should. Because it could be destroying any future you have, even your very soul.
After the second Great War, many of the orphanages were severely understaffed. A researcher studied what happened when these babies, who had enough nutrition and acceptable housing…
Why won’t they ever leave?!
You know the person I’m talking about. The one in your crew who comes to the party and then doesn’t leave. You drop hints, even change into your pyjamas, but the only way to “the party’s over” through their thick skull is to physically shoo them out the door. There’s very little more aggravating than a guest who won’t leave.
You may be doing the same thing at your…
Education News has put together an video and accompanying infographics about the Education Bubble Crisis. They don’t separate out undergraduate from graduate education, but the basic principle the cite still applies: you need to do some real research into what your potential field actually pays. 25 years ago when I went to university these numbers were a bit harder to find, since you had to know…
John Fea was a Lilly Fellow at Valparaiso University back when my wife was. He has always been interesting — his book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? was a George Washington Book Prize finalist — and recently he has commented about graduate school in the humanities on both his Facebook page and his weblog. Darren Grem, on of his commenters, compared humanities graduat…
Flattery really does work and it works in real life and not just for politically savvy types. We’ve seen that flattery works, that flattery has no upper limit and works even when they know you have an ulterior motive, and that the people who poo-poo flattery as only useful for the politically savvy are full of it.
I told you that was last part was bull pucky and here’s why.
Let’s look at IT…
I’ve been telling you this week that flattery works, and that it’s not just researchers who believe that flattery apparently has no real upper limit. Most of you haven’t really believed this and you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So here’s those caveats I’ve been talking…
I know that flattery doesn’t work on you, as you some of the world’s more intelligent people who see right through such things. But the rest of the world isn’t as savvy as you. You can get much more and be seen as much more effective at work by simply flattering your boss.
Yesterday we saw how Prof Chatman’s unpublished research showed the massive effectiveness of flattery, and, most…
You’re a smart person with great ideas. Other people may not see this but I do. It’s because of this that I want to tell you about a key way to get your boss to like you. Because a boss who likes you will give you better assignments, more time off, and better pay. Even for the same performance.
It turns out that flattering the boss is one of the best things you can do. And there’s no upper…
Hulk misunderstood. Puny humans always trying to kill Hulk. Hulk smash puny humans!When you are bigger than everyone else, you are much more likely to get hammered for irritating people. It doesn’t matter if that’s physical size or “work” size, where you have the capability to do a larger job than the people around you.
This is one of the key problems of Hidden High Potentials (HHPs). Work…