Buffet’s 50% rule; Three People at Work; Parenting Your Employees; Wise Goals; Econ Recon: The Trump Bump

John Henry Newman
1801-1890
Essayist, Novelist and Theologian

Warren Buffett’s 50% Rule

We think of Warren Buffett’s success as being due to his prowess as a stock picker. You might be surprised to hear the advice that Buffett gave to a group of Columbia Business school students that he predicted would enhance their value in the market place by 50%. This one page article from INC reveals what the Sage of Omaha considers to be the single greatest skill to boost your career. Good advice for you and the young people in your life.

Three People You Meet at Work (and in Life)

Vistage Speaker on recruiting Ed Ryan once remarked that “we invite employees into our organizations and human beings show up.” Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant author of “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success”  (highly recommended) suggests that these human beings show up at work (and in our lives) in three different flavors.

Which one are you? Which categories do those important to your success occupy? Find out in Professor Grant’s 13 minute TED Talk.

The Parenting is Just Beginning

When I was a Commanding Officer Instructor in the Navy, I frequently remarked to Prospective Commanding Officers that part of their job, when faced with a difficult sailor, was to attempt to do in six months what their parents had been unable to do in 18 years. Simon Sinek, who rocketed to fame with his book “Start with Why,” says that to be successful as company, it is a corporate imperative to undo the “bad hand” that Millennials were dealt by bad parenting and addictive modern technologies. Here’s a 15 minute video that anyone who is raising a child today, or now has to supervise a Millennial, ought to watch right now (like drop everything and watch it RIGHT NOW). In a recent interview, he shared the serious concerns he has about Millennials, how they got to be the way they are, and why corporations will have to undo the damage and finish raising them. Check out the video: Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace.

SMART Goals….or WISE Goals?

We’re only 8 days into the New Year, and for many the answer to the question “how are your resolutions holding up?” may already be answered in the negative. New Year’s resolutions and other goals often come to naught; not because they are the wrong goals, but because they weren’t created or managed properly.

Goal setting methodologies like SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound) and other have been around for a long time. But do they work? A short article in HBR suggests that there are “3 Popular Goal-Setting Techniques Managers Should Avoid.” Check this and reset your goals and those of your subordinates while the year is young.

Econ: Recon:  The “Trump Bump” Revisited

Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the forty-fifth President of the United States on January 20. Since his election the economic news, especially the stock market, has been positive. Will this continue? Economist Brian Wesbury seems optimistic about the new administration but worries about spending. Alan Beaulieu of ITR Economics recently told a group CEOs in Denver the US Economy should “continue to march forward regardless of political winds.”