“In 1970, The average CEO earned 28 times more than the average worker. Despite all the recent noise around reining in runaway CEO pay, the gap has widened drastically.”

“Why do most managers fail to spend enough time attending to the basics of managing people? When I ask them why, they almost always give me some variant of the same reasons—I call them the top seven management myths in today’s workplace.”

“Managing a successful business (nonprofit or for-profit) — or building up the health of an already established business — requires healthy, ongoing leadership and management, planning, product and service development, marketing and financial management. To carry out these practices in a healthy manner, it’s important to first understand the basic ‘territory’ in which these practices are carried out.

These practices are all ’systems’ that occur within the larger system of the organization. This is not academic talk — this is a highly practical point to understand. To truly understand and be effective at these practices, it helps greatly if leaders, managers and employees have some basic understanding of the overall ’system’ of the business, its common traits, dimensions, ‘personalities’ and life cycles. Too often, this basic nature is not understood. Instead, people tend to focus only on the day-to-day events and when problems occur, they don’t see the “larger picture” in order to resolve these problems effectively.”

“I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in ‘the rest of the world.’”

“It’s no mystery that we’re meeting averse, but here’s another reason why we think meetings are toxic: There’s no such thing as the one-hour meeting.

If you’re going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour and invite 10 people to attend then it’s a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You are trading 10 hours of productivity for one hour of meeting time.”

“Would it come as a shock to you to find out that the most highly paid corporate people do not know the costs of doing business inside and outside their organization? An online survey conducted by Strativity Group, Inc., a consulting company based in Parsippany, NJ, reports that over 300 executives:

81% do not know the cost of a customer complaint
75% do not know the cost of acquiring a new customer
60% claim they do not deserve their customers’ loyalty
51% claim their company does not deliver unique and beneficial products or services
50% do not know their organization’s annual customer retention rates…”

“The United States is the ‘no-vacation nation,’ the only advanced economy in the world that doesn’t guarantee its workers any paid vacation time, says a recent report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. In fact, 28 million Americans are no-vacation workers, receiving no paid time off, vacation or holidays. On the other hand, managers and professionals often get a good deal of vacation, says John Schmitt, a senior economist with the center and one of the authors of the report.”

“Biznik is a business-building social network for indie professionals. That means folks who own and operate their own businesses, whether they are the head honcho of one or a team of twenty. Accountants, fashion designers, writers, sex therapists, business coaches, attorneys, marketing gurus, soap makers — and countless others — are all part of the Biznik mix. Biznik offers a new way of networking. We refer to it as ‘radical self promotion’ because it’s not your typical me-first-take-no-prisoners kind of self promotion. For example, we emphasize collaboration over competition.”

I’m going to be offline for a week or so. bBlog will return shortly after 16 July. In the meantime, check out these fine folks with online publications: Communication Nation, Adaptive Path, Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin.

That’s right, XPLANE is hiring!

“I try to read my favorite business book of all time at least once a month. Luckily it’s only 30 pages. Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth was first published in 1758 as a preface to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. It’s a summary of his previously published thoughts on how to succeed in business (and, I’d say, life). It’s chock full of astute observations…

“A common question on the Business of Software forum is ‘How do I get started…’ — fill in the blank. Some people are seeking their first consulting clients, some their first product customers, and some are seeking people interested in their service; others are trying to grow their business. Whatever the situation, we all want to get the word out about our products or services and we’d like it to then spread like crazy. Whatever you think of ‘marketing’ or ’sales’, spreading the word is really all it’s about. For most BOS readers, it’s not about advertising, large marketing campaigns, or a giant sales force. It’s about something else that I think can be summarized in these seven steps.”

“Ever since I came back to HOTorNOT in October 2006, people have been asking me what the company is up to. For the previous 6 years, HOTorNOT had pretty much been steady along the same course: A picture rating site with a dating-like application built on top (without the seriousness of a dating site) that generated healthy amounts of cash for my cofounder Jim and I. For the first 3.5 years, it was Jim and I working about 10 hours a week each, with the company earning many millions of dollars per year.

Then 2 things changed, and we realized we had to change with them…”

Lots of vintage technology company t-shirts — goofy stuff!