Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions for 2013; Glassdoor via IT Business Edge

Glassdoor via IT Business Edge; Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions for 2013: "Not sure what to expect in an interview? Be prepared - for anything. Glassdoor has combed tens of thousands of interview questions shared by job candidates over the past year to compile its list of the Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions for 2013."

Monday, February 25, 2013

How Will 2 Magazine Titans Merge? Carefully; New York Times, 2/25/13

Christine Haughney, New York Times; How Will 2 Magazine Titans Merge? Carefully: "When Jack Griffin, the former president of the magazine company Meredith, took the reins at Time Inc., he threw a holiday party for his staff on the 34th floor of the Time & Life Building. For many employees at the famously hierarchal company, their first visit to the rambling executive suites that inspired the sets of “Mad Men” became known as “The Miracle on 34th.” Mr. Griffin lasted just six months at Time before he was asked to leave by Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of its parent company, Time Warner, who publicly rebuked Mr. Griffin, saying that his “leadership style and approach did not mesh with Time Inc. and Time Warner.” As bankers and media executives hammer out the details of creating a new publicly traded company to house the magazine titles of the Meredith Corporation and the lifestyle titles of Time Inc., employees at both companies have been wondering how executives will take on the harder task of merging two very different corporate cultures."

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Demands Telecommuters Report To The Office; HuffingtonPost.com, 2/23/13

HuffingtonPost.com; Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Demands Telecommuters Report To The Office: "Marissa Mayer, the relatively new CEO of Yahoo, has decided she wants her employees showing up to the offices beginning in June, not just telecommuting from home all the time, according to All Things D’s Kara Swisher.... Swisher also reports, perhaps unsurprisingly, “strong” anger among those affected by the policy, many of whom joined the company in part because of the flexibility that Yahoo previously provided. But don’t just assume that telecommuting, or working remotely, or whatever you want to call it, comes from a place of laziness. A number of studies have proven quite the opposite..."

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Feuds and betrayals underscore need for a manager pope to reform ‘ungovernable’ Vatican; Associated Press via Star, 2/21/13

Nicole Winfield, Associated Press via Star; Feuds and betrayals underscore need for a manager pope to reform ‘ungovernable’ Vatican: "Ordinary Catholics might not think that dysfunction in the Apostolic Palace has any effect on their lives, but it does: The Curia makes decisions on everything from church closings to marriage annulments to the disciplining of pedophile priests. Papal politics play into the prayers the faithful say at Mass since missal translations are decided by committee in Rome. Donations the faithful make each year for the pope are held by a Vatican bank whose lack of financial transparency fueled bitter internal debate. And so after 35 years under two “scholar” popes who paid scant attention to the internal governance of the Catholic Church, a chorus is growing that the next pontiff must have a solid track record managing a complicated bureaucracy. Cardinals who will vote in next month’s conclave are openly talking about the need for reform, particularly given the dysfunction exposed by the scandal. “It has to be attended to,” said Chicago Cardinal Francis George. With typical understatement, he called the leaks scandal “a novel event for us.” Cardinal Walter Kasper, a German who retired in 2010 as the head of the Vatican’s ecumenical office, said the Curia must adapt itself to the 21st century. “There needs to be more co-ordination between the offices, more collegiality and communication,” he told Corriere della Sera. “Often the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”"

How to Give a Meaningful "Thank You"; Harvard Business Review, 2/20/13

Mark Goulston, Harvard Business Review; How to Give a Meaningful "Thank You" : "Whether it's your executive assistant, the workhorse on your team, or — they exist! — a boss who always goes the extra mile for you, the hardest working people in your life almost certainly don't hear "thank you" enough. Or when they do, it's a too-brief "Tks!" via email. So take action now. Give that person what I call a Power Thank You. This has three parts... If the person you're thanking looks shocked or even a little misty-eyed, don't be surprised. It just means that your gratitude has been a tad overdue."

Monday, February 11, 2013

A Look at “Profiles in Leadership”; Library Journal, 2/11/13

Ernie DiMattia, Library Journal; A Look at “Profiles in Leadership” : "Profiles in Leadership is one of the few books about leaders that have had a lasting value on my education in the field. Along with The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, it has provided a valued lesson in comprehending the dimensions of the topic and the extent to which it impacts our societal development. Although there are many other such books to choose from, these two, in my mind, are above all the rest. The challenge for professionals is to find the best sources of motivation to improve and further develop their leadership skills, and to recognize that multiple traits can only enhance the ability of an individual to be a true leader."

Library Chairman: Renovation Budget Still A Work in Progress; New York Times, 2/8/13

Robin Pogrebin, New York Times; Library Chairman: Renovation Budget Still A Work in Progress: "The budget plan for the New York Public Library’s renovation project is preliminary and imprecise at this point, Neil L. Rudenstine, the library’s chairman, acknowledged in a letter last month to trustees that was obtained by The New York Times. The cost projections have been one focus of the debate over the project, with critics calling for more financial detail beyond the current estimate of $300 million."

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Prison and Libraries: Public Service Inside and Out; Library Journal, 2/4/13

Stephen M. Lilienthal, Library Journal; Prison and Libraries: Public Service Inside and Out: "The Pew Center on the States’ 2011 report, “State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons,” notes that at least 95 percent of prisoners ultimately will be returning to their communities after incarceration. Policymakers are increasingly aware that “aggressive recidivism reduction is a smarter approach to curbing corrections costs and protecting public safety.” It cautions that besides a prison record, people returning from prison often have great needs stemming from poor education and lack of effective life skills. Stronger efforts by prison and public libraries to help prisoners and people returning from prison to their communities can help them start to narrow those gaps. Glennor Shirley, retired coordinator for Maryland’s prison libraries, hopes public libraries and prison administrations and their libraries will work in partnership more. More librarians share Shirley’s views. Rhode Island Department of Corrections librarian Loretta M. Cimini in a presentation last year to the Rhode Island Library Association expressed hope that public libraries will better serve one of the most “under the radar” groups—released inmates. Shirley declares, “Very few [public libraries] have proactively done outreach or programming in prisons. This is a lost opportunity to help inmates to reenter society successfully. Working in partnership, prison and public libraries can have a positive impact on prisoners, their families, and public safety and help to build stronger communities.”"

Bring Back Shushing Librarians; Salon.com, 1/30/13

Laura Miller, Salon.com; Bring Back Shushing Librarians: Library users plead for quiet places to read, write and study — but is anybody listening? : "A recent survey by the Pew Research Center, “Library Services in the Digital Age,” polled a nationally representative sample of 2,252 Americans about what they get, and want, from public libraries... “Quiet study spaces for adults and children” comes in fourth, and here is where the results go rogue. The percentage of people who consider quiet spaces to be a very important element in any public library is 76, only one percentage point less than the value given to computer and Internet access. A relatively silent place to read is almost exactly as valuable to these people as the Internet!... Granted, quiet isn’t a sexy or novel topic. Perhaps that’s why the handful of stories written about this survey — and the survey summary itself — ignore how highly the public rates quiet as a library service. Instead, the interpretation Pew promoted, and the angle taken up by Publishers Weekly and other trade publications, is that libraries have a marketing problem: The reason why patrons don’t rate libraries’ non-core activities and programs more highly is because they just don’t know about them. Maybe that’s true, and far be it from me to discourage any library from offering baby sitting or writing workshops or classes in estate planning — those are all boons to the community. But not at the expense of quiet. Does expanding the library’s mission demand that patrons surrender the peace they seek there? Couldn’t libraries do both? Apparently not, to judge by the input the Pew researchers got from an “online panel of library staffers.”"

Maybe Management Isn’t Your Style; New York Times, 2/2/13

Peggy Klaus, New York Times; Maybe Management Isn’t Your Style: "IF you asked all your friends, your family and — I regret to say — your co-workers to talk about their jobs, I think you’d conclude that there is no shortage of bad bosses in this world. Studies have shown that poor managers can cause good employees to leave and, ultimately, can seriously reduce productivity in a workplace. You can point to any number of reasons for this situation: insufficient training, poor communication, etc. But I say a bad boss is born each time someone goes into management without knowing whether he or she is truly suited to the role. When people are offered a managerial job, they may become intoxicated by the idea of more power and a bigger salary. Refusing such an offer can seem out of the question."

How Poor Leaders Become Good Leaders; Harvard Business Review, 2/4/13

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, Harvard Business Review; How Poor Leaders Become Good Leaders: "In our previous blog, Bad Leaders Can Change Their Spots, we described a group of 71 leaders who were able to elevate their leadership effectiveness from the 23rd percentile to the 56th percentile — that is, from being poor leaders to good ones. While many readers were impressed that it could happen, many more were curious (and even doubtful) about how it could happen. Admittedly, not every leader can do this. But all 71 of these individuals (who represented three-quarters of the entire group of poor leaders in this study) did accomplish this seemingly Herculean shift. How? Using 360-degree feedback data over a 12- to 18-month period, we were able to track what, exactly, the leaders who'd made the most significant progress were doing. We found that practically all of them (more than 80%) significantly improved their ability to executive nine particular leadership skills."

Going from "Suck to Non-Suck" as a Public Speaker; Harvard Business Review, 2/1/13

Peter Sims, Harvard Business Review; Going from "Suck to Non-Suck" as a Public Speaker: "[Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo] graciously shared the story about how he started speaking publicly in law school and was a terrible speaker until he started 1) talking about things he believed in passionately, and 2) knew his material extremely well. I now routinely share that advice today, with one addition: know your audience."