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“Music has value”: Hard lessons from the music industry

May 21, 2015
4 min

“Music has value”: Hard lessons from the music industry

When Scott Borchetta walked on stage last week in Nashville to accept an award from the industry association MusicBiz, he had a message written on his suit sleeve which said “Music has value”. Yes, that message seems trivial and obvious. After all, you don’t see executives attend other industry conferences writing messages like “software has value” or “football has value” on their designer clothes. But when the American Idol mentor, who founded Big Machine Records and signed

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Lessons from the year 26,631

Apr 15, 2015
4 min

Lessons from the year 26,631

Our more diligent followers may recall when I wrote my earlier post extolling the universal virtues of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I therein lamented that my fellow writer Elana had already written a piece on one of my favorite works of literature, Catch-22. Forgiveness is forthcoming. I also mentioned the unlikelihood of being able to write a business-relevant piece based around another of my favorite pieces of literature: the sci-fi epic Dune. Having recently given it my

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The value of valuing employees

Feb 5, 2015
4 min

The value of valuing employees

- Stacey Ebert Companies have many similarities to schools, only now we are all grown up. Jobs replace assignments, bosses replace teachers, and paychecks replace grades on report cards. Just as students want to impress their teachers, today it’s adult employees feeling the same about their supervisors. Valuing employees benefits all parties and might just be the secret to maintaining the best talent. Regardless of age, we all like to feel valued. Whether it’s public or one-o

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Making every day a snow day

Jan 30, 2015
4 min

Making every day a snow day

An online article in New York Magazine following the recent northeastern Blizzard-That-Wasn’t addressed an interesting implication of technological integration to the workplace: the impending death of the adult snow day. As an individual who telecommutes every day, I can agree with the general content. While friends stayed up late snapping photos on New York City’s abandoned 3rd Avenue, I prepped for conference calls with California. While former office co-workers enjoyed a d

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Post-Modern Work: What Millennials recognize and Baby Boomers don't

Jan 15, 2015
4 min

Post-Modern Work: What Millennials recognize and Baby Boomers don't

- Frank Luby The Economist welcomed us to 2015 with a handful of intriguing articles on the future of work. In “Workers On Tap”, they framed up the growing free-lance economy as a battle in workers’ minds between job security and time flexibility. The article implied older workers (which include me) place greater value on the former while Millennials prefer the latter. Other recent articles confirm that Millennials want even more than flexibility, they want input and interest

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Lessons From One of the Greatest TV Shows Ever

Jan 8, 2015
4 min

Lessons From One of the Greatest TV Shows Ever

- Paul Mooney Let me begin by directing you to the earlier post from Present Tense partner Elana Duffy highlighting the good business sense to be taken from Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22. It inspired me to write a similar article about my favorite novel, but since that's also Catch-22, that was a no-go. And since my second favorite novel is Frank Herbert's epic Dune, I figured I'd choose a different medium as I'm not quite sure how to tie a tale of space witches, sem

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Positive Vibes to Positive Profits: Professional Development that Works

Dec 3, 2014
4 min

Positive Vibes to Positive Profits: Professional Development that Works

- Stacey Ebert Professional development can be a trial. No one wants to sit through monotone presentations or worse, click-through online training that takes them away from the mounting pile of work sitting on their desk. That’s true no matter how strong our love for broadening horizons and expanding our knowledge. The irony is that professional development is critical to employee engagement, yet it often comes across as dull, mindless, and lacking energy. If those presentati

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The Battlefield of Leadership

Nov 11, 2014
4 min

The Battlefield of Leadership

Elana Duffy Veteran’s Day, Armistice Day, whatever you call it in your country, the idea is the same in many countries that took part in the First World War: honor and remembrance to those who fought for freedoms, and those who laid down their lives to protect their countrymen. It is a day of peace and respect. Being a veteran, it seemed prudent to address the concept of expanding some timeless leadership techniques from the battlefield to management. Love or loathe the milit

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Leadership without leaders: Lessons from disaster relief

Sep 23, 2014
6 min

Leadership without leaders: Lessons from disaster relief

- Frank Luby One week after an EF4 tornado destroyed Marysville, Indiana in March 2012, I performed clean-up work as part of a United Way effort. As the sun set through the mangled trees on that Saturday afternoon, another volunteer made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. “You know, it’s amazing how much you can get done when there are no leaders around,” he said. His comment triggered questions I’d never thought to ask before this experience. How can a group of tot

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