459 Posts found for Source: Fast Company

The work we do is supposed to reflect our talents, intelligence, and so on. Therefore, the meritocratic idea that you “make your own luck” is a very punishing one and explains many people’s anxiety and depression over the work they do.

A society in which only extraordinary achievements are valued is setting most people up for a cruel fall. You’re no more likely to become … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior

Six no-nonsense ways women can close the gender wage gap.

Content: Article | Author: Linda Tischler | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Career, Women in Business

When we can psychologically check out from our work, we call it a job; when we can’t, we call it a career.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Career

If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Thought

A new study by Teresa Amabile (HBS) will change how you generate ideas and decide who’s really creative in your company.

Content: Article | Author: Bill Breen | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Experts generally agree that four traits are essential to predicting how a person will perform. Those traits are dominance, extroversion, pace (or patience), and conformity. If you understand which of those traits is most salient and how the other three factor in, you can identify the kinds of environments where a person will thrive. The logic works the other way too: If you can figure … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Career, Human Resources

In interviewing potential hires, I look for passion first. Second, interpersonal sensitivity. Do they listen? Do they display a care and respect for other people and their points of view? Third, a willingness to articulate a point of view. I don’t care whether it’s right or wrong, but they do need to have one. Skills come after that. Always. You can always teach people the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Human Resources

Searching far and wide, the Fast Company team has identified 101 ideas, people, and trends that will change the way we work and live in 2005. Most year-end best-of lists look to the past — what was. Fast Company ‘s Fast Forward project looks into the future — what’s next? The future is something to get excited about again. Here’s the people, products, and projects … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Trends / Analysis

A study by Cornell and the University of Colorado found that spending money on experiences is more fulfilling than spending it on possessions. So if you’ve got a product, you’d better get busy turning it into an experience. This idea also has serious consequences for companies who have always assumed that the way to keep employees happy is to promise them more money.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Personality / Behavior

Here’s an innovation tool that’s often hidden in plain sight. If you’ve looking for new ideas, don’t. Look for problems instead. Go and talk to whoever runs the customer complaints department and ask for a list of the top 10 moans and groans. Alternatively ask some customers . Or maybe grab a product designer, a psychologist, and a social anthropologist — and watch people using … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Innovation

Are you an INTJ or an ESFP? Why employers love personality tests more than ever, and what you need to know before you pick up a pencil.

Content: Article | Author: Alison Overholt | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Human Resources

Social visionary Bill Drayton is creating a network of incalculable problem-solving power. Ashoka, named for a peace-minded third century BC Indian emperor, has identified and supported 1,500-plus Fellows, as it calls them, in 53 nations since Drayton founded it in 1980. (Five of them are winners of our 2005 Social Capitalist Awards.) It seeks out social entrepreneurs with enormous ideas — solutions of such ambition … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Keith H. Hammonds | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Management

Malcolm Gladwell, says one fan, is “just a thinker.” But what a thinker. His provocative ideas are taking the business world by storm. So who is this guy, and what can he teach you about business?

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Management

At W.L. Gore, innovation is more than skin deep: The culture is as imaginative as the products.

Content: Case Study | Author: Alan Deutschman | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior | Company: W. L. Gore & Associates Inc.

Without courage, all virtue is fragile: admired, sought after, professed, but held cheaply and surrendered without a fight. Winston Churchill called courage “the first of human qualities . . . because it guarantees all the others.” That’s what we mean by the courage of our convictions. If we lack the courage to hold on to our beliefs in the moment of their testing, not just … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Leadership

One thing we can claim with complete confidence is that fear is indispensable to courage, that it must always be present for courage to exist. You must be afraid to have courage. Suffering is not, by itself, courage; choosing to suffer what we fear is. And yet, too great a distinction is made between moral courage and physical courage. They are in many instances the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Leadership

The [work-life balance] problem…is that while success at work is largely rooted in achievement, success outside of work mostly isn’t. The things most of us say we value in our nonwork lives — simply caring and being there for others — aren’t a function of accomplishing anything per se. Contentedness in that realm is less a matter of doing more than of cutting back.

Obvious … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Career, Life

U.S. Senator John McCain offers an insightful look at the concept of courage.

Content: Article | Author: John McCain | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Leadership, Personal Development

For most businesses, warehouses full of stuff are a kind of security blanket. But Dell has replaced inventory with information, and that has helped turn it into one of the fastest, most hyperefficient organizations on the planet. Here’s how Dell uses speed as the ultimate competitive weapon, and why rivals may never be able to catch up.

Content: Case Study | Author: Bill Breen | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Operations | Industry: Personal Computer | Company: Dell

A few decades ago, our lives were centered in places. We had the most in common with our village or city neighbors, with the people geographically closest to us. Place formed our connections to the social groups that mattered most: our tribes, churches, jobs, and schools. The defining politics — and so, defining values — were those rooted in physical communities.

Today, place has lost relevance … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Culture, Trends / Analysis