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Showing posts from January, 2018

Sketch 3 will not be coming to the iPad Pro (with good reason)

Sketch 3 will not be coming to the iPad Pro (with good reason) : We don’t have plans for an iPad pro version at the moment. Yes, it has a beautiful screen, but there’s more to consider, such as how to adapt the UI for touch without compromising the experience. But the biggest problem is the platform. Apps on iOS sell for unsustainably low prices due to the lack of trials. We cannot port Sketch to the iPad if we have no reasonable expectation of earning back on our investment. Maintaining an application on two different platforms and provide one of them for a 10th of it’s value won’t work, and iPad volumes are low enough to disqualify the “make it up in volume” argument. In the meantime, we focus on what we do best; a great, modern app on OS X for design professionals.
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How to spot toxic employees before you hire them — Quartz at Work

How to spot toxic employees before you hire them — Quartz at Work : Screening for toxic employees when hiring Managing a toxic employee is difficult enough. Weeding them out during the hiring process can be an even more difficult challenge. Some people are good on paper and perform well in interviews. Their toxic qualities only come out once they are engaging with coworkers, handling challenges, or working under pressure, which is why honing your hiring process to spot troublesome signs early is key. Interviewers and hiring managers need to “be on the lookout for signs of civility,” as leadership expert Christine Porath puts it. Ask candidates about previous experiences rather than engaging them in hypotheticals. So, for instance, rather than asking someone how they would handle a difference of opinion with a co-worker, ask for specific examples of how they’ve resolved conflicts in the past. Most people, especially seasoned candidates, come to interviews having prepared a stock a...
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Google will pay to train 10,000 IT specialists it may never hire — Quartz at Work

Google will pay to train 10,000 IT specialists it may never hire — Quartz at Work : Google is trying a new hiring tactic: pay to train other companies’ employees. The tech giant announced on Jan. 16 that it had turned its internal IT training program into an online course and was offering scholarships for up to 10,000 Americans. While Google plans to hire from this pool of students, most of the course’s graduates will likely go to off to other companies. That could prove to be model for Silicon Valley, and every company struggling to find qualified candidates. Paying to train employees who may never work at your company is becoming a new recruiting tool, says a spokesperson from Coursera, the online learning website that will host Google’s IT training program. Google is the first to offer scholarships through Coursera’s platform, but more companies will offer similar arrangements this year. Many face a Catch 22 when hiring for technology jobs. Firms want people with demonstrated ski...
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Curbing Over-Prescription of Antibiotics: Ranking Clinicians Is a Nudge That Sticks — Quartz at Work

Curbing Over-Prescription of Antibiotics: Ranking Clinicians Is a Nudge That Sticks — Quartz at Work : You are not a top performer In the 2016�JAMA�paper, the team studied the prescribing habits of 248 clinicians (such as doctors and nurse practitioners) at 47 primary care practices in Los Angeles and Boston. They focused on antibiotic prescription rates across 17,000 cases in which the clinician diagnosed acute respiratory illness, which does not warrant antibiotics. For the first 18 months, the researchers simply tracked prescribing habits. Then, between November 1, 2011, and October 1, 2012, they employed several intervention strategies and continued to document.
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Be a better worker with "sludge," the behavioral science productivity trick — Quartz at Work

Be a better worker with "sludge," the behavioral science productivity trick — Quartz at Work : Meet Sludge. Sludge appears to have been concocted by Thaler himself (with a hat-tip to his co-author) on Twitter: Thaler’s response was a reference to the bureaucratic red tape that undermines the effectiveness of government programs. In this particular tweet, he was responding to the complexity of the US tax code and its impact on tax filers. This example paints sludge as a nefarious force that should be eradicated at all costs. But what if sludge could be used as a tool for improving our work lives? It turns out, I’ve been a sludge aficionado for quite some time, particularly when it comes to my addictive relationship with my iPhone. I disabled TouchID and created a really, really long password and have also used Parental Controls to help me tune out the incessantly depressing news flow. Sometimes I purposely leave my laptop charger at home to force myself to focus on my m...
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The Future of Performance Reviews

The Future of Performance Reviews So it makes sense that the first significant departure from traditional reviews happened at Adobe, in 2011. The company was already using the agile method, breaking down projects into “sprints” that were immediately followed by debriefing sessions. Adobe explicitly brought this notion of constant assessment and feedback into performance management, with frequent check-ins replacing annual appraisals. Juniper Systems, Dell, and Microsoft were prominent followers. CEB estimated in 2014 that 12% of U.S. companies had dropped annual reviews altogether. Willis Towers Watson put the figure at 8% but added that 29% were considering eliminating them or planning to do so. Deloitte reported in 2015 that only 12% of the U.S. companies it surveyed were  not  planning to rethink their performance management systems. This trend seems to be extending beyond the United States as well.  PwC reports  that two-thirds of large companies in the UK, f...
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Research: Negative Feedback Rarely Helps People Improve

Research: Negative Feedback Rarely Helps People Improve : Is shopping for confirmation an innate drive? Can we decide not to do it? I doubt it. As I said, negative feedback manifests itself as a psychological threat. And over the last two to three decades, a body of research has shown that that kind of threat has not only behavioral consequences but physical ones as well: Lethargy. Anxiety. Depression. I think we can’t help reacting to it by doing something that will make us feel better. Whether it’s conscious or not, we don’t know. It’s probably a little of both, but it’s such a fundamental, deep-seated drive to want a circle of people around us that will prop us up. And we’ll go to great measures to create that circle if we have to. What we see in the data is that current feedback systems trigger this reaction of constructing a surrounding group that will protect us from experiencing critical input. It’s the definition of an echo chamber. So feedback not only doesn’t work but lea...
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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

A Better Way to Deliver Bad News : They try to avoid uncomfortable confrontations by using an indirect approach: They make up their minds about an issue and then try to help their employees reach the same conclusions by asking a carefully designed set of questions.
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Different cells, different sizes

Introduction - Eppendorf Handling Solutions Contamination with microorganisms, such as mycoplasma that cannot be detected by bright field microscopy, as well as cross-contamination with other eukaryotic cells which results in misidentified cell lines, continue to present the most severe challenges afflicting cell culture laboratories worldwide.
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How to Give Feedback People Can Actually Use

How to Give Feedback People Can Actually Use GIVING FEEDBACK How to Give Feedback People Can Actually Use Jennifer Porter OCTOBER 27, 2017  SUMMARY    SAVE    SHARE   COMMENT     TEXT SIZE    PRINT   8.95   BUY COPIES RECOMMENDED Harvard Business Review,... ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT   HBR ISSUES 18.95   ADD TO CART The Best Leaders Are Great Teachers LEADERSHIP & MANAGING PEOPLE   HBR ARTICLE 8.95   ADD TO CART How to Hire LEADERSHIP & MANAGING PEOPLE   HBR ARTICLE 8.95   ADD TO CART plume creative/Getty Images Over the last decade, I’ve conducted thousands of 360-degree feedback interviews with the colleagues of the leaders I coach. My goal with these sessions is to get a better sense of my clients’ strengths and weaknesses, but more often than not, the feedback isn’t particularly useful. How do you give feedback that helps someone learn and improve? This  strategic deve...
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U S Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC, Commission, or agency) whistleblower program

The Dodd-Frank Act 1 amended the Exchange Act 2 by, among other things, adopting Section 21F, 3 entitled “Securities Whistleblower Incentives and Protection ” Section 21F directs the Commission to make monetary awards to eligible individuals who voluntarily provide original information that leads to successful Commission enforcement actions resulting in monetary sanctions over $1 million and successful related actions 4 Awards must be made in an amount equal to 10 to 30 percent of the monetary sanctions collected 5 To ensure that whistleblower payments would not diminish the amount of recovery for victims of securities law violations, Congress established a separate fund, called the Investor Protection Fund (Fund), from which eligible whistleblowers are paid The Commission established OWB, an of ce within the SEC’s Division of Enforcement (Enforcement), to administer and effectuate the whistleblower program It is OWB’s mission to admin...
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Earth Security Report 2017 – Earth Security Group

Earth Security Report 2017 – Earth Security Group : The Earth Security Report 2017 provides a roadmap for global business to align their growth to the demands for social inclusion and environmental security that are defining the countries in which they operate, whilst navigating the risks and opportunities reflected in the wider Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda.
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mmm Allianz Risk Barometer

The sixth annual Allianz Risk Barometer identifies the top corporate perils, and potential responses, for 2017, based on the insight of more than 1,200 risk experts from 50+ countries. 
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Best (and worst) business buzzwords | INTHEBLACK

Best (and worst) business buzzwords | INTHEBLACK : Intrapreneurship: Why risk entrepreneurship when you can become an intrapreneur, creating innovative new ventures within an established company? Even if they flop, you still get paid. Another similar buzzword is “change agent”. Whatever happened to “business process reengineering”? Pivot: Entrepreneur Eric Ries coined this as a part of his lean start-up method of business development. It is now just another way of saying your original idea crashed and burned and you’re making a “paradigm shift” to something that might work. Martech: Marketing technology has long been used by advertising agencies and traditional media to gauge audiences’ receptiveness to content. Still, times change and to measure your current Martech “stack”, or suite of something, take this quiz. Deck: Speaking of “stack”, card sharks will be familiar with the term “stacking the deck”. In offices everywhere PAs are “teeing up new decks” – namely collating a seri...
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'Mission statement' and 'thought shower': The most hated office jargon revealed –�and their translations

'Mission statement' and 'thought shower': The most hated office jargon revealed –�and their translations : The 12�most hated jargon phrases “Touch base”. Translation: To meet or talk about a specific issue “Blue sky thinking”. Translation: Creative thinking not grounded in reality “We’re on a journey”. Translation: Highlighting that a company, team or project has not yet reached its mission or objective “Game changer”. Translation: A product, idea or process that represents a significant shift in thinking or way of doing things “No-brainer”. Translation: Claiming that something is an irrefutably good idea “Thought shower”. Translation: A meeting to share ideas, often without considering practical limitations “Run it up the flagpole”. Translation: To present an idea and see if it generates a favourable reaction “If you don’t like it, get off the bus”. Translation: Implying that a colleague should leave a company if they are unhappy “Mission statement”. Translat...
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The business jargon we want to leave behind in 2017

The business jargon we want to leave behind in 2017 : "Have�a huddle". Translation: to have a meeting or catch-up with other team members "Reach out". Translation: to try to communicate with a person or a group of people "Give�110pc". Translation: to make the maximum possible effort "To segue".�Translation: to change the topic of conversation�so smoothly that people might not even notice "To push back". Translation: to�delay or postpone�something� "Front and centre". Translation:�To highlight, emphasise and�bring to the attention of "Helicopter view". Translation: to have a�broad view of the business "Cascade the information". Translation: to pass information or knowledge to others�
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Pyramid Scheme Alert

Pyramid Scheme Alert : Ponzis and Pyramids is a consumer education audio series that examines multi-level marketing and revealing the similarities between Wall Street Ponzis and Main Street Pyramids.
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