Entries by First Sun Team

Leadership: Why Do Managers Hate Agile?…Agile Involves Self-Organizing Teams that Work in an Iterative Fashion & Deliver Continuous Additional Value Directly to Customers

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Why don’t Agile and management get along? In a poll last Wednesday of some 400 people working in many different firms where the practices known as Agile and Scrum are being implemented, 88 percent reported tension between the way Agile/Scrum teams are managed in their organization and the way the rest of the organization is […]

Strategy: 11 Productivity Tips That Will Make You More Effective…Every Project Requires an Action Plan. There is Always a Most Efficient Series of Steps for Each Project.

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With the abundance of demands on our time today, it’s easy to feel like we’re losing control. Even if we’ve decided what really is important, we still require a few sensible suggestions to assist us in organizing our time more effectively. That is the purpose of these 11 tips for time management and productivity. 1. Synchronize all […]

Strategy: The Complete Guide To Crafting A Perfect LinkedIn Profile…”Pledge to Banish Trite Buzzwords & Take These Easy Steps to Reinvigorate Your Profile,”

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January 21 is the most popular day of the month for LinkedIn users to update their profiles.  If you’re one of the millions of people rewriting your “summary statement” or uploading a new cover photo today, Catherine Fisher, a LinkedIn career expert, has some advice for you. “Pledge to banish trite buzzwords and take these […]

Strategy: These 8 Scales Reveal Everything You Should Know About Different Cultures…How Organizations Make Decisions Relates Closely to How they View Leadership, but with Some Important Differences

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Many people, perhaps especially Americans, underestimate how differently people do things in other countries.  Examples and insights for avoiding this can be found in “The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business,” a 2014 bestseller by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer (also check out those global communication diagrams from Richard Lewis). Japan is the opposite of America when it comes […]

Leadership: Why All Managers MUST Be Leaders…The Only Thing Worse ‘Than Working for a Manager that Can’t Lead is Missing Out on the Opportunity to Turn our Existing Leaders into Managers

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Anyone within an organization has the potential to become a leader, but managers MUST be leaders. In schools and in our organizations we have been taught and conditioned to believe that managers and leaders are two separate people which is quite a harmful assumption.   As a result we have managers who cannot lead and […]

Leadership: 7 Navy SEAL Sayings That Will Keep Your Team Motivated… “Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Face.”

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Asleep at your desk? Read this and get going.  Whether you are an entrepreneur, working in corporate America, or building a start-up, it is imperative to continually seek new ways to stay inspired and driven. Being a self-starter is a fantastic quality, but we are all human and get distracted by the minutiae of our day-to-day responsibilities. […]

Leadership: How Successful People Stay Productive & In Control…Unfortunately, Self-Control is a Difficult Skill to Rely On

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TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that the upper echelons of top performance are filled with people who are high in emotional intelligence (90% of top performers, to be exact). The hallmark of emotional intelligence is self-control—a skill that unleashes massive productivity by keeping you focused and on track. Unfortunately, self-control […]

Legal: Lowe’s $10 Million Settlement Provides 3 Lessons For Firms Working With Independent Contractors…Common Misconceptions Held by Today’s Businesses is that Working With an LLC Removes the Risk Associated with Misclassification

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Another Fortune 500 titan, another misclassification lawsuit. Lowe’s became the latest company this week to settle a legal dispute over the classification of its independent contractors. The home improvement outfit joined the likes of Google, FedEx FDX +0.72% and Uber, all who have been mired in similar controversies over the last year. Earlier this week, […]

Leadership:Boring Meetings? Try These Simple Steps to Go From Dull to Dazzling…Don’t Just Meet Because You’re a Group & You’ve “Always Had a Weekly Staff Meeting.”

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<A HREF=&quot;http://bid.g.doubleclick.net/xbbe/creative/jump?p=APEucNXjJBBSj3QtcArz3FeQIGIWcc4Z6tUM3hKUoqyFgkzcu6bpXCs&amp;d=APEucNVSIel7XZCao_FCC3_Tzl2KczWnXQ5hEMoR3L_UC-pEvkqSLHaqMoR7UTdNYQhM2oZDYemQV7sWjsionnKhQe2cSKHNDlMCoIoT7338sTUSMn3J74dW8kTpW52BXbaDOkswQ51q6HfYju0s_yNXq25-tluTVtPnqWHwAcDzHmuPISZPmQ1hq9Qr07XszrT4mDv28t7nn5vEfWCWfpGmQTXtVT6SMq-upAJNX1LyPutaj2t91cKiJ2rPFg1wK7ptMiZNX7cAnav4YviBw21_JiTfyyTzEup9eQvEUcxUdPf_Vcl7X7rOiGarxghliHKqgUct8UYGEGvNGbboF4JB6pwggWQratftwe3qAp3YplwEpgelf7jPMGArYeL22BxaPxbjDAoGnuDwaktW1EhNYNcvAiK8Np44k7lZnTUPiXPd9nqxox17zqTdZCHY8R1mRrESOwUH3A9EvX5u7HAaWgrzXdMNXHyvYpk07cto55F3vtqFWlk&quot;><IMG SRC=&quot;http://fw.adsafeprotected.com/rfw/bgd/34365/3575509/xbbe/creative/ad?p=APEucNXjJBBSj3QtcArz3FeQIGIWcc4Z6tUM3hKUoqyFgkzcu6bpXCs&amp;d=APEucNVSIel7XZCao_FCC3_Tzl2KczWnXQ5hEMoR3L_UC-pEvkqSLHaqMoR7UTdNYQhM2oZDYemQV7sWjsionnKhQe2cSKHNDlMCoIoT7338sTUSMn3J74dW8kTpW52BXbaDOkswQ51q6HfYju0s_yNXq25-tluTVtPnqWHwAcDzHmuPISZPmQ1hq9Qr07XszrT4mDv28t7nn5vEfWCWfpGmQTXtVT6SMq-upAJNX1LyPutaj2t91cKiJ2rPFg1wK7ptMiZNX7cAnav4YviBw21_JiTfyyTzEup9eQvEUcxUdPf_Vcl7X7rOiGarxghliHKqgUct8UYGEGvNGbboF4JB6pwggWQratftwe3qAp3YplwEpgelf7jPMGArYeL22BxaPxbjDAoGnuDwaktW1EhNYNcvAiK8Np44k7lZnTUPiXPd9nqxox17zqTdZCHY8R1mRrESOwUH3A9EvX5u7HAaWgrzXdMNXHyvYpk07cto55F3vtqFWlk&quot; BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT=&quot;Advertisement&quot;></A> When everything’s said and done, there’s usually more said than done.  As most anyone involved in business, academe, politics, religion, or any number of other endeavors can attest, that truism applies especially to meetings.   Meetings can be a mind-numbing squandering of time, money, patience, and other finite […]