Business

Say you dream up an innovative product or advertising strategy. Or you have devised a better system for paying bills at home. But when you present the idea to your colleagues, boss, spouse—whomever—you are met with resistance. Here’s how to head off opposition, before it gathers steam, by addressing the three types of resistance: “I DON’T GET IT” The individual or group simply doesn’t understand your idea. Perhaps you used the wrong language. Jargon may work in your department, but to those down the hall, it may sound like you come from another country. Or your audience lacks the background to understand the concept. When my accountant reviews my retirement…

Photo: Pexels Face it, you work much harder than you need you. Chances are you’ve had this conversation with yourself. The average workweek is over 60 hours and it is getting longer, not shorter. Remember back in the 80s when it was predicted that the average workweek would be less than 30 hours in the next 20 years? As if. Did you know there are some professions, especially in the tech sector, employees are expected to put in 100+ hour weeks? Even interns. This marathon approach to working creates a lot of stress and limit the quality of life. It also hinders performance, productivity, and creativity. Working a lot harder,…

Everyone negotiates at some level every day. You negotiate with your spouse about where to go for dinner or what movie to see, and with your boss about salary. Yet standard negotiation strategies often leave people dissatisfied, worn out, and alienated. A better way to deal with differences is called “principled negotiation.” How it works: Listen actively. Frequently, negotiators talk, but not to each other. Instead, they talk merely to impress third parties or their own constituency. Example: Following World War II, negotiations over the city of Trieste involving large delegations from Yugoslavia, Britain, and the US stalled until representatives abandoned their large delegations and began meeting alone and informally…

The ability to perform well under pressure is crucial to career success—so crucial that General Motors, Lucent Technologies, and other corporations use the test I developed to predict how potential hires will do under challenging circumstances. Follow these steps to stop stress from sabotaging your life and career. Take a Stress Test Stress is a constant today. Rapid technological change and globalization are making jobs increasingly complex. We can’t escape workplace stress, but we can identify episodes when it has gotten the better of us. Stress overload often leads to one of these mistakes. The Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS) inventory test comprises 144 questions and is widely used to…

Visitor attraction King John’s Castle in Limerick has been officially reopened by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan TD following a €6m revamp funded by Fáilte Ireland and Shannon Development. In the first four months since reopening its doors on the 28 June this year, the revamped visitor attraction has welcomed over 40,000 visitors from Ireland and overseas – double the amount in the same period in previous years. John Ruddle, chief executive, Shannon Heritage, Ireland’s largest operator of tourist attractions, said: “We have had more visitors in the first four months since reopening than we would normally have in a full year. We see this as only the start and…

  Scrooge McDuck Becomes Mr. Burns Boss The pivotal question with the news of the massive $52.4 billion in stock buyout of 21st Century Fox by Disney is “Why would Disney do this?” The answer is simple. The entertainment industry continues to evolve and Disney had its eye on the market share Fox was able to control with their original brand of entertainment. One of the main components of the deal is Sky , a pan-European satellite broadcasting company. Sky is an on-demand internet streaming media, broadband and telephone services company that is headquartered in London. In 2015, they reported over 30,000 employees and a subscriber base of more than 21…

How Did “Small Business Saturday” Fare in Small Towns? Amercian Express sponsored this year’s “ Small Business Saturday .” The event has received the largest “awareness campaign” this year. The results? They are just coming in this morning. According to JJ Ramberg, contributing editor for MSNBC, over 108 million people shopped in their local communities on Saturday. However, sales figures have not been disclosed yet. The push has been to support small business in the wake of the changing economy. This shift has put a lot of local companies out of business over the past decade. For example, Barnes and Noble put the small bookstore out of business and then Amazon put Barnes and Noble…

There was one word that best described Oct. 19, 1987: “Panic.” It was real money. It was a real fear. It was real panic. What shocked financial analysts is how it happened. On that autumn morning, stocks were up 15% for the year, and the forecast looked bright. In just one day, the DOW dropped more than 500 points, nearly 23% and global markets followed the crash sending the world into a financial tailspin. There was pushing, shoving, screaming, profane words, rage, and how there wasn’t an all-out brawl is shocking, to say the least. Orders were coming through faster than they could be handled. Phones were ringing off the hook, and…