Category Archives: Helpful Hints

The World Cup and Your Style

Wembley Stadium, London England

I love the World Cup.  Besides being a month-long celebration of the world’s most popular sport, it’s always great to watch any sport being contested at the highest levels (as an aside, this is also my favorite sports week since the U.S. Open happens on one of my favorite golf courses but more about that later in the week).

What’s really intriguing, especially for the millions of Americans who don’t watch soccer on a regular basis, is how you can really tell the different teams by their styles.  In fact, if there is anything really noticeable about the US team, aside from how good we’ve become, it is that I don’t think we have a real distinctive style which, in itself is our style.  In a way, that totally makes sense.  After all, we are a nation of immigrants playing a game invented elsewhere and we’re amalgamating the styles from all those nations.  But there are some business lessons here as well. Continue reading

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Filed under Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

Wake up, dude…

I love this article from NPR. In brief, it talks about, and demonstrates, how new college grads are totally unprepared for the realities of what’s facing them as they enter the work world. I realize it was 33 years ago, but honestly, I don’t recall ever feeling this way nor being this naive. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t.
It’s not much to write about as we get to this holiday weekend, but it’s kind of fun. In fact, this kind of sums it up:

“Once I get closer to graduation,” Fogel says, “I would probably be more interested in professionalism, because then I’d be more likely to find a job.”

You know, you’d be shocked how many people my age are thinking exactly the same thing.  Let’s take some time off, rest up, and think about this:

Polk says researchers pointed to one area where recent graduates stand out: “There’s a sense of entitlement that we’ve picked up on, where people think they’re entitled to become, let’s say, president of the company within the next two years; they’re entitled to five weeks of vacation.”

Maybe we can all come back a little more rounded and focused on reality.  There’s a reason why they call it work!

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Filed under Growing up, Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

Roasted Chicken

Roasted chicken

It’s Friday so let’s talk about chickens or, more specifically, about roasting chickens. I don’t mean the classification of the bird: I mean how one prepares it.  What the heck can we learn about business from roasting a chicken?  Lots! Continue reading

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