May 15, 2009

Table of Contents:

Keeping Up: Current Events

Population 100

If the world were a village of 100 people, how many of the 100 would be white? How many would speak Spanish? How many would have a college education? Satisfy your curiosity by checking out The World of 100.

World Happiness Survey

According to two recent studies, Danes are the world's happiest people. So how did they achieve such an honor? A balance of economic strength and a social program safety net are given the credit. Danes say that hygge (pronounced "hooga"), a combination of relaxing, eating, drinking, partying, and spending time with family. is the reason for their happiness.

Marketing Tweets

Twitter, the microblogging service that has grown by leaps and bounds, is a great marketing avenue for small businesses, which troll "tweets" for business opportunities. It has become a no-cost marketing program for many small businesses, giving them the opportunity to have sincere, engaging interactions with prospective clients.

Keys to Your Career (1 of 3)

Are you trying to get ahead? Have you been struggling to figure out what action you take will leave the biggest footprint on your career? If this is you, then stay tuned. This is the first article in a series of three articles about your career, and how you can shift it out of neutral. Let's get started!

Give the Gift of Keeping People on Track

At times, it can be difficult to keep yourself on track and moving forward in your job and career, let alone supporting the people you lead in their endeavors. Days are crammed with challenges and deliverables, and keeping abreast of how your team members are doing can seem like a task to fit in between lunch at your desk and the next meeting.

Editor’s Note

The May 2009 issue of HR Magazine  has a very interesting statement: “Building personal accountability among employees should be the heart and soul of a company’s business strategy.” In our opinion, only those companies that are proactive in this area during this economic downturn will come out stronger. Pulling back is reactive and not positive for talent development. EDSI’s course, Increasing Personal Effectiveness®is all about personal accountability.
  

Book Report

The Truth About What Customers Want
Michael Solomon

The Truth about What Customers Want by Michael Solomon, PhD (2009, Pearson Education Inc), is a “how to” handbook for the way people and organizations act, and the consumer behavior that drives them to buy particular products or services.

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Situation Room
Hostile Take Over

Jackie, a highly successful bank manager in Minneapolis has been having trouble at her job ever since the bank was bought out by its competitor. She was shocked by the take over, and felt betrayed that she hadn't been let in on the plans before they were announced to all of the employees. She has based much of her career identity on the fact that she works for a local bank that supports the community.

Now she walks around the office with a chip on her shoulder. She seems short tempered, and is outwardly sarcastic about the new ownership, even in front of customers or employees of the other bank, who are now her colleagues. The branch manager sat down with Jackie and attempted to let her blow off steam about her feelings. This only seemed to fuel her feelings and justification for her behavior.

What would you do?

What do you do?

Send in your solutions!

Author Profile

Bill Treasurer

For this issue of The Performance Report, we were fortunate enough to sit down with Bill Treasurer, author of Right Risk and (most recently), Courage Goes to Work (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008).

Bill's outlook has been shaped by his interesting personal history, which includes high diving. Bill, can you tell our readers a bit about your background?

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