XPLANE.COM > bBlog / Archive: April 2007

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The Cubicle Survival Guide Blog

April 27th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“After nearly 14 months of researching, writing, editing, and rewriting, ‘The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth’ is set to debut. The book is officially on sale Tuesday, February 27, 2007, which means if you order it online it should ship out then. The publication date, one week later, is Tuesday, March 6, 2007; this is when ‘The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth’ should be available in bookstores.”

The Corporate Org Chart Wiki

April 26th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“Welcome to our experiment. It’s a new way to tap the collective knowledge of our community about the internal network of any company–so new that we are introducing it not only in beta form but in early beta. We know it’s a work in progress, and we want your help to make it better. Wiki away and let us know how we’re doing. This is an experiment in collaborative problem solving, where our goal is to create something of great value to the whole web community.”

5 Startup Sales Tips From Turkish Rug Dealers

April 25th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Business, Customers

“I’m writing this article on the flight back from a week-long trip to Istanbul, Turkey. My wife Kirsten is an amateur rug collector and we decided to celebrate her birthday in Istanbul where the 11th International Conference On Oriental Carpets was being held… Loving husband that I am, I accompanied Kirsten during her visits to a variety of rug dealers in Sultanhamet (the old district of Istanbul which is the carpet capital of the world). This is where The Grand Bazaar is located. If you’ve never been to Istanbul, I highly recommend it. It’s a great city. In any case, here are some of the insights I gained from my experience.”

10 Tips for Being a Better Office Professional

April 23rd, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“Today’s random topic is Professionalism in the Workplace. I’m not in a position where I can quit my day job and work on SportsNode full time. So I work in an office. In said office I sometimes see some things that inspired this post (regardless of how “common sense” some of these items are). Some of these rules (presented in an unordered list) have been broken by new folks for which this happens to be their first job and they just don’t know any better. Some however are perpetrated by people that should really know better…”

12 Rules for Self-Leadership

April 20th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Leadership

“Management and Leadership are not interchangeable words for me. We need both of them, for in part, management tends to be more internally focused (within a company, within an industry, within a person) whereas leadership is more externally focused on the future-forward actions you will take in the greater context of industry, community, or society. They have commonality to be sure, for instance, both are about capitalizing on human capacity, however they are defined by the differences we value in them: Management tends to be about systems and processes, whereas Leadership is more about ideas and experiments.

I believe there is both art and discipline in each, and I think of these rules as the discipline which helps reveal the great capacity of the art. Thus last time, twelve suggestions to help you self-manage, with a more disciplined you newly able to reveal your art. Now, twelve to help you self-lead, so a more disciplined you is newly able to reveal the art in others, those who choose you to lead them.”

12 Tips for an Organized Desk

April 20th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Project management

“Here are twelve quick tips for organizing your desk. These are things that have worked well for me. Most of them are probably applicable to others as well.”

Does Strategic Thinking Reduce Stress?

April 18th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Leadership

“A business unit manager may fret over a $50 million decision. If you’re Jeffrey Immelt, CEO at GE, that’s not a stressful decision, the big decisions are about billions of dollars. So Immelt spends time coaching managers through the $50 million situations. In short, I find the bigger the picture one considers, the less one sweats the small stuff.”

The Hottest Ad Agency in the Country And Why I Sort of Hate It.

April 18th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Advertising

“For some time now, Crispin Porter & Bogusky has been the hottest ad agency in the country. It’s won massive accounts like Burger King and Volkswagen. It’s been “Agency of the Year” at the Clio Awards for two years running. And I sort of hate it.”

The Power of Green

April 18th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Environmental

“We in America talk like we’re already “the greenest generation,” as the business writer Dan Pink once called it. But here’s the really inconvenient truth: We have not even begun to be serious about the costs, the effort and the scale of change that will be required to shift our country, and eventually the world, to a largely emissions-free energy infrastructure over the next 50 years.”

Top 25 Apps to Grow your Business

April 16th, 2007 | Comments Off | Posted in Entrepreneurship, Technology, The Web

“If you are running a small business, you know that to be successful you need to be a jack-of-all-trades. The smart way to manage everything from company finances, to client relations, to marketing, is to use the right tools – tools that are simple enough that they won’t require you to spend a lot of time and money you don’t have setting them up. In this guide we cover the 25 best web2.0 applications for entrepreneurs who are looking for simple, cheap, and effective solutions to solving some of the tasks facing their small business or startup.”