The Principles of Ethical Intelligence

There are five simple principles of ethical intelligence that all leaders must follow:

1. Do No Harm. This is inspired by the classic oath taken by doctors and other healthcare professionals. While there are some situations in which doing harm is unavoidable, individuals are obligated to reduce the amount of harm that is done to a person or a company.

2. Make Things Better. This is tied to the belief that improving one’s own life is the key to improving the lives of others. The message of this principle ties with something that frequent air travelers are quite familiar with: the idea of securing one’s own oxygen mask first during cabin decompression. With their own mask secured, people can better assist others who may be struggling.

3. Respect Others. In addition to respecting legal rights, leaders must also be respectful of people by following the golden rule: “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” Telling others the truth, and keeping their confidential information a secret, is the path to true respect.

4. Be Fair. Being Fair means giving others what is due to them. This can be broken down into three main prongs: rectifying injustice, disciplining people proportionally, and spreading scarce resources around in an equitable way.

5. Be Loving. This can also be thought of as being compassionate toward others. This fifth and final principle can be compared to a can of WD-40 lubricant. While not absolutely necessary, the idea of compassion “makes things flow better.” In some ways, Being Loving is the most important of the five principles. While it may not be necessary in the business world, compassion toward others can help people more fully embrace the other four principles of ethical intelligence. Being Loving is more of an ideal than an ethical requirement, but it is an ideal that Weinstein believes leaders must aspire to.


This article is based on the book "Ethical Intelligence" by Bruce Weinstein, PhD. The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Fire, Flow, and Future

Today's business managers benefit from an unprecedented number of quality improvement tools, such as lean manufacturing, re-engineering, Total Quality Management, and Six Sigma. Yet despite substantial investments, many companies continue to see slow improvement in the quality of their products, services, and processes.

Management is routinely troubled by questions such as "Why are my sales dropping off?"; "What can I do about excessive scrap?" and "How do I reduce high turnover?" How they decide to answer those questions has a measurable impact on both quality and the bottom line.

LEO can help organizations find ideal solutions to these questions not because it is a better management tool than the likes of Six Sigma, but because it causes a shift in every person's frame of mind, affecting how they approach problems and how they decide which actions to take. LEO is a broad methodology that transforms how existing management tools are used, and it operates best when used by people at all levels in an organization.

While designing LEO, there are three scenarios with the most room for quality improvement: Fire, Flow, and Future. In a Fire deployment, LEO is used to solve an isolated, often unexpected problem that needs immediate attention and an accompanying change in quality -- for example, when a food manufacturer's product is suddenly and inexplicably underweight.

A Flow deployment seeks to improve quality in the operational processes of an organization--for example, a hospital's procedure for hiring nurses or a manufacturer's process for creating an RFQ (a request for quote). In a Future deployment, quality is built into the process of innovation.

All three of these scenarios are focused on improving an existing product or service or developing an entirely new one. Regardless of the type of deployment, a LEO team should be appointed to follow same three-step process of Listen, Enrich, and Optimize.

While the composition of the team will vary by deployment, in general it should be led by someone from management, and team members should be chosen based on who the scenario effects and requires input from. No deployment can succeed unless the executive cadre is actively supporting it each and every day.

This article is based on the book "Power of LEO." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

The Science of Personal Success

The findings concerning personal change are based on research focused on "Changers." Changers are people who were able to overcome significant personal challenges and successfully changed their behaviors and habits for at least three years. 

Research conducted by the Change Anything Labs found that a major barrier to successfully changing behavior is not a lack of willpower, but the false belief that willpower is essential for change. In reality, skills can be learned that improve a person's ability to successfully change behavior.

Many sources of influence prevent people from altering their habits. Individuals who use tools to control those influences, however, tend to be much more successful at changing behaviors.

For example, Change Anything researchers discovered that after learning a few simple skills to control influences, 50 percent of experimental subjects were able to resist temptations. There are identified six sources of influence that affect people as they try to change their habits. They are also identified change tactics that can help counteract each of these influences.

People who follow these steps and align sources of influence in their favor are more likely to achieve personal success.

1. Personal motivation. Although personal impulses can be compelling, it is possible to interrupt these impulses by connecting with personal goals during crucial moments.

2. Personal ability. A proven way to change habits is to enhance personal ability and to learn new skills.

3. Social motivation. There is a clear social component to bad habits. When friends encourage bad behavior and also engage in it, this is very difficult to resist. If individuals can transform "accomplices" into "friends" who encourage good behavior, they are more likely to change their habits.

4. Social ability. To change longstanding habits, people usually need support from other people. Individuals who get a life coach or mentor are often more successful at changing behaviors.

5. Structural motivation. People who connect short-term rewards or punishments to new habits are usually more likely to adopt those new habits.

6. Structural ability. Researchers have found that minor environmental changes can have a significant effect on a person's choices. Individuals experience faster behavior changes when they add visual cues to help them focus on their goals.


By understanding these influences, it is possible for people to consciously design change plans that address them. Individuals who incorporate the six sources of influence into their change plans are ten times more likely to succeed than people who do not take this approach.

This article is based on the book "Change Anything." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Meaningful Workplaces: Sense of Self

The key concept of the sense of self is the recognition that people bring their "whole selves" to work. Workers bring emotions and spiritual concerns to the job just as much as they bring their bodies and minds.

However, most workers are not fully aware of how much of themselves they bring, or how much more they can bring. Before anyone can bring their whole selves to work, people need to become more aware of who they are, of their values and beliefs, and what their sense of purpose in life is.

It is impossible to realize an individual's potential without first knowing what values and beliefs can be reached. This sense of self gets to the heart of a person, as opposed to what work a person does.

What people do is simply the label of a job that provides for their basic needs. Meaningful work that people identify with, however, is more than just a job.

It is the culmination of education, training, practice, development and emotional investment into a way of life that is, in effect, the performance of the worker's values, beliefs, moral philosophy, and personality. One way to integrate more of the self into work is find ways to include workers' spirituality.

This is not necessarily a sacred spirituality, although for many people, that is an important level of spirituality. Of more significance is "psychological spirituality" that is a kind of faith in the human spirit, one that unites all humans together and to the earth itself.

It is a mindset that promotes deep ethical and social awareness that "we are all in this together." Cultivating this psychological or secular spirituality at work helps workers identify their purpose because purpose depends on awareness of personal values, of which people usually only become aware through some sort of spiritual life.

Purpose can be identified through the overlapping of personal values, individual strengths, and interests. Often, workers might know that they are good at a particular kind of work, but if that work conflicts with their values or is not the kind of thing they enjoy, the work is unfulfilling and may even be detrimental at the psychological level.

In today's workforce, most people seem to find their purpose through helping others, and meaningful work seeks to instill the sense that the work of a company is helpful to society at large. In short, workers want to know that their own lives matter, and that their work matters to others.

In addition to workplace spiritual development and identifying work that cultivates purpose, sense of self involves self-actualization and self-efficacy. The former is a process where the worker's capacities are fully and creatively used.

It is a process of making choices for growth and of continually living, working, and relating to the world, rather than to individual accomplishments or meeting goals set by managers and leaders. The latter term, self-efficacy, is an attitude that recognizes that people's actions will produce the outcomes they desire, and provides the mental fortitude to withstand obstacles that impede those outcomes.

Meaningful work allows workers to make their own decisions to cope with various roadblocks and dilemmas in such a way that promotes the knowledge that workers will get past the roadblocks and to learn from them. The most important component of the sense of self to meaningful work is the need for continuous learning that moves beyond the old "outcome paradigm," which is concerned with minimal competence, avoiding failure, single-answer solutions and acceptable results, to one that is driven by understanding and wisdom.

Such a model would be based on continual personal and professional improvement, informed risk-taking, team and collective performance, cooperation and collaboration, coaching, support, multiple answers, conversation, and processes. Meaningful work depends on meaningful learning as a critical intrinsic motivator.

This article is based on the book "Meaningful Workplaces." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

UNDERSTANDING DIVERSIFIED MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS: DEFINITIONS, CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES

Diversified mentoring relationships describe mentor and protégé relationships with members who vary by "race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, religion, disability or other group memberships associated with power in organizations." Diversified mentoring relationships face many challenges.

Researchers need to consider the shared group associations of mentors and mentees. Importantly, different branches of diversity should not be gathered under the title of minority.

Each shared group faces different challenges depending on their specific experiences and the context of the mentoring relationship. Every organization has different "micro-climates" that non-visible, stigmatized groups must navigate.

Having a mentor who can better understand these micro-climates can greatly benefit the protégé. Diversity in a mentoring relationship can change over its lifespan.

While group membership differences may initially create barriers, these differences may become less of an obstacle over time. In fact diversified mentoring relationships can lead to members relating on more individualized and deeper levels.

These individualized similarities are what cement a strong and meaningful mentoring relationship. Members of a diversified mentoring relationship must accept the role of privilege in their organization.

Privilege refers to the benefits that certain shared group members enjoy. On the other hand the numerical minority group members experience higher expectations and greater visibility.

Whereas pretending that these differences in privilege do not exist may increase comfort in a diversified mentoring relationship, ignoring differences in privilege means that members cannot learn from one another as effectively. Discussing diversity differences in great depths does allow members of the mentoring relationship to learn from one another and better understand diversity, but over discussing diversity does not allow members to appreciate one another on an individual and deep level.

Ideally, diversified mentoring relationships address diversity but do not allow it to dominate their conversations and mentoring relationship. In order to encourage diversified mentoring relationships, the environment in which they exist must accept and encourage diversity.

Therefore change from inside an organization is the optimal tool for encouraging diverse and meaningful mentoring relationships. In order to achieve this, leaders of the organization need to appreciate the importance of diversity in the workplace and the challenges workers face as a result of discrimination.

Similarly, the organization needs rid itself of the glass ceiling that prevents diversity from being represented on a senior level. Formal mentoring may be an essential tool in the future for advancing the careers of numerical minority groups in the workplace.

Currently, formal mentoring programs are not any more effective than having no mentor at all. Employees with informal mentors are more likely to advance in their careers than those with formal mentors.

In order for formal mentoring programs to create a supportive environment around diversity, it is important that employees have access to both formal and informal mentors. However, the quality of a mentor is more important than a mentoring relationship being formal or informal.

Mentoring programs not only provide numerical minorities with access to mentors, but they also increase the number of future, diverse mentors. A mentoring program that encourages diversity can create a more positive work environment with an inclusive culture.

This article is based on the book "Mentoring and Diversity." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Finding Recognition Everywhere

Effective recognition relies heavily on intrinsic motivation. Each employee has individual needs and expectations that motivate their actions.

Most people are intrinsically motivated by varying degrees of achievement, affiliation, or power/control. Supervisors present workplace goals based on these motivators.

Additionally, they must use extrinsic motivation properly by incorporating meaningful recognition into bonuses, incentives, contests, and prizes. Employees can also receive recognition that works by providing quality products and services to customers.

A workplace that allows people to contribute in a meaningful way will give their job purpose. Managers should find ways to help their employees take pride in their work and boost their team or organization's reputation in the community.

Creating an atmosphere of trustworthiness is a powerful form of intrinsic recognition. For example, Best Buy uses a system called ROWE ("results-only work environment"), in which employees chose how, when, and where their work is performed.

Supervisors only measure if the work is accomplished. This system demonstrates trust in employees and has reduced voluntary turnover and increased productivity 42 percent.

An organization can also show employees they are recognized by providing opportunities for growth. In-house vocational counselors are essential to helping employees find new areas of challenge and advancement.

People often leave a job to pursue growth opportunities in their career. By proactively encouraging and creating career furtherance from within, organizations retain valuable employees and foster company loyalty.

Fair pay, benefits, health insurance, vacation time, and a quality working environment also affect whether an employee feels recognized. People do not necessarily receive recognition from a fair salary and healthy work environment, but their absence will be perceived as a lack of recognition.

This article is based on the book 'Make Their Day!' The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Anyone Can Have a Great Career

Having a great career entails making unique and useful contributions to an organization, in addition to instilling strong feelings of loyalty and trust within others. The unique and useful contributions make up the "what" of an individual's career.

The contributions themselves come from an individual's specific mix of passions and talents. The loyal and trusting relationships make up the "how" of an individual's career.

These flourishing relationships are the result of an individual's character and conscience. Because anyone can make unique contributions and maintain trusting and loyal relationships, anyone can have a great career.

Individuals need to practice and improve their skills to be able to contribute effectually to the organization, and they need to have a character that is worthy of the loyalty and trust of others. Career-seekers also need to maintain the right kind of ambition.

If someone is ambitious solely for financial success and is not willing to work hard for it, their ambition will likely destroy their career and make them miserable. However, if they are ambitious to make a positive and helpful contribution to their organization and the public as a whole, they will be much more likely to experience success and fulfillment both in their personal lives and in their career.

By committing to doing what is right, individuals will become driven to contribute more, feel better about themselves, earn more money, and have a wider range and greater number of positive opportunities. The landscape of the global economy is experiencing a shift from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Age.

The Industrial Age used machines to increase productivity and required workers to fulfill specific roles and complete very specific tasks. In the Knowledge Age, however, people are expected to choose the problems they work on.

They need to make unique and effective contributions by using their own skills and talents to solve the issues at hand. And because of the dependence on skill and knowledge rather than machinery, there is no limit to the number of contributions an individual can make so long as they continue enriching themselves.

While it is true that the current state of the economy is resulting in a decrease in job security, it is also true that organizations still face a wide variety of problems, and by making oneself useful by posing solutions to those problems, they can ensure the security of the position they already have or obtain an entirely new position. Many employees feel as though they are just going around in circles, getting nowhere with their career.

They feel imprisoned by their job description, they limit themselves and their abilities to so that they can fit within the constraints they've imposed upon themselves. These employees need to realize that their jobs are no longer defined by their job descriptions, and that if they truly are dissatisfied with their line of work, it is never too late to reassess themselves and their career and begin the search for a position that melds better with what they have to contribute and what they would like to achieve.

In the Knowledge Age, individuals can challenge old assumptions and bring new insight to the table, they can stop pigeon-holing themselves into unsatisfying jobs, and they can address problems with a ride range of easily available informational resources. Individuals need to ask themselves what their actual contribution will be, not what their job description says.

Those stuck in the Industrial Age believe that they are their function, that they are a job seeker, or that they are simply a gear in the organization's machine, while those moving into the Knowledge Age know that they should make significant contributions, that they are a problem solver, and that they are a human being with a unique and useful set of strengths.

This articles is based on the book "Great Work, Great Career." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

The Quiet Revolution of Women

A 1978 study of accomplished women, which became known as the Imposter Phenomenon, revealed behavioral patterns indicating a lack of confidence. Women at that time felt they were tricking others into thinking they were smarter than they actually were.

They also believed their promotions were due not to their ability but to luck and timing. Women carefully calculated every move, including how they expressed themselves, fearing that others would realize they had given them too much credit.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, women who chose to work often felt they had to emulate men in order to achieve success and be accepted into the corporate world. They wore traditional, dark-skirted suits with shoulder pads.

Women also adopted a masculine communication style, getting into verbal arguments and discussing sports. Women who have a drive for success still deal with stressful situations related to their careers, but their needs have evolved.

They seek challenges to show off their skills and to avoid boredom. They also want to establish clear career paths, and they want the ability to communicate in a manner that will ensure others take them and their ideas seriously.

Women feel entitled to receive job satisfaction and opportunities; they will move on if the current organization does not support their needs. One should not mistake this sense of entitlement for laziness.

High-achieving women work hard to attain their desires. There are five drivers of both success and difficulty for modern, high-achieving women:

1. Extreme confidence. This positive attitude compels women to work hard for what they want; however, it may lead them to work too hard and to take on projects that are too difficult.

2. Constant need for new challenges. Women seek to meet their needs with successive accomplishments, possibly leading to frequent job changes without careful planning.

3. A strong drive for recognition based on performance, not gender. Women are more concerned with proving their own unique abilities, rather than those of females in general. This attitude may cause others to perceive them as harsh and insensitive.

4. Work is their life's blood. High-achieving women might only feel pleasure from their accomplishments in the working world. They might lose sight of the big picture and become disconnected from the rest of the world.

5. Experience is the best teacher. Learning comes easily and quickly, but this ability could lead women to believe they are self-sufficient, rejecting the advice and support of others.

Since the mid-80s there has been a profound change in working women, particularly those who are high-achieving. They no longer leave their professional personas at work; they are stronger as individuals, and their careers define who they are.

While this is a significant advancement from working simply to cover financial obligations, it has left many ambitious women unable to separate themselves from their work. This change can be attributed to four major shifts in society.

The first is the widespread teaching of self-esteem. From the time they are toddlers, women have been taught they can do anything and their opinions matter.

Not only are they instructed not to rely on others, but they are frequently told they are better than their peers. This teaching has resulted in a generation of mentally strong women who are so obsessed with their quest for excellence they push themselves too hard.

The increase in competitive sports for women has also been significant. Sports have taught women to fend for themselves, both mentally and physically.

Another factor is the growing number of women holding advanced degrees, which increases their earning potential and available job opportunities. The final factor is the positive support women now receive.

Their predecessors were not expected to excel in the work environment. Now, people believe that women can work and also be good at it.

This article is based on the book "Wander Woman." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Animal Spirits and Their Effects

Animal Spirits dissects standard economic theories and demonstrates their failure to account for human emotions, even though emotions have a large impact on the economy. Traditional economic theory operates under the assumption that individuals act rationally and make economic decisions based on purely economic reasons.

These economic theories are widely accepted by professional economists and are utilized in governmental policy-making. Unfortunately, traditional economic theory does not examine how the economy behaves when individuals make rational decisions based on non-economic reasons, irrational decisions based on non-economic reasons, or irrational decisions based on economic reasons.

In the quest to make economics a more scientific and calculable study, economists have largely left out the single largest influence on the economy: the animal spirits of human emotion. All animal spirits fall into one of five different categories: confidence, fairness, corruption, money illusion, and storytelling.

All of these categories have strong effects on the current economy, and their influence must be taken into account when creating government policy and making economic predictions. Ignoring the fact that human emotions affect purchasing and financial decisions only serves to create policy that will not hold up to these constantly-changing animal spirits.

By accepting and understanding these emotions, however, economists and policy makers can create more effective policies and plans. These policies and plans will not be permanent, however, and should change according to the cultural, economic, and emotional climates of the time.

For example, when banks stopped becoming mortgage holders and just became mortgage initiators, policy did not keep up with this change. Traditionally, banks would approve individuals for mortgages and then hold the mortgages themselves.

Because they held the mortgages, it prevented them from writing mortgages that people could not afford because they did not want to end up with the property or losing out on mortgage payments. Then, in the 2000s, banks began to sell the mortgages they had to other financial institutions.

These financial institutions did not know about the fiscal standing of the mortgages they held because the banks had divided individual mortgages into parts and sold the different parts to different institutions. Because of the large signing fees the banks earned when they approved individuals for mortgages, and the fact that they planned on selling the mortgages after they were signed, the banks approved people who could not actually afford them.

Because policy did not take this into account, the real estate bubble grew and eventually crashed once the individuals who received mortgages they could not afford began to have their homes foreclosed upon. This is just one example of the many ways in which animal spirits can affect the economy.

This article is based on the book "Animal Spirits." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

The Heart of a Leader: The Seven Qualities of Leadership

Leadership is more about who someone is than what they do. The more a person incorporates the essence of leadership internally, the more effective they are as a leader on the outside. More than 3,000 studies on leadership traits have been conducted over the years, and seven key qualities have been identified. The good news is these qualities can be learned.



Quality #1: Vision - Leaders have a clear picture of where they want to go and how to get there, and are able to articulate that vision to others. They have strong beliefs and values which they are unwilling to compromise, and combine these with goal-oriented, measurable action.

Quality #2: Courage - Leaders are willing to take risks in order to innovate and to maintain the “continuous offensive” toward the company’s stated goals, even if there is no guarantee of success. However, smart leaders gather as much information as possible to reduce the element of risk before making a decision. They also practice “courageous patience,” or the ability to stay the course even when things are not going well, and exhibit the ability to remain calm during a crisis.

Quality #3: Integrity - Integrity is most often cited by executives as the key leadership quality, and forms the foundation on which all other leadership traits are based. It requires dealing with every situation or challenge based upon the facts or the reality rather than upon assumptions, and accepting responsibility when things go wrong, and then focusing on solving the problem.

Quality #4: Humility - Leaders must take the blame when mistakes are made, and offer congratulations to others for success. Humility does not imply weakness, but reflects the self-confidence to listen and learn from others and a willingness to surround oneself with those who possess strengths or skills which one lacks.

Quality #5: Foresight - Leaders are tasked with thinking about the future. They need to be strategic thinkers, able to anticipate possible pitfalls and market trends. They may use scenario planning to help anticipate future crises and opportunities, creating detailed scenarios of the company and the business environment five, ten or twenty years down the road based on information about the company’s products, customers, competitors, and business regulations and laws.

Quality #6: Ability to Focus Energies and Resources in the Most Important Areas - Leaders must harness the limited resources of time, money and people, making sure they are used efficiently and effectively where they will have the most impact.

Quality #7: Cooperation and Ability to Work Well with Others - Leaders must be able to encourage everyone to work together for an organization’s success. This requires continually practicing cooperation and getting along with everyone in their daily lives.

To access more resources on leadership and management, please visit BusinessSummaries.com.

Do Men Earn More Because They Are More Productive?

A study of court reporters finds that men court reporters completed 29% more work than the women in the same time period. Another, of ob-gyns, found that the men ob-gyns put more hours into direct patient care and did more deliveries, but they also worked four more hours per week – so they produced more in a week, but not necessarily per hour worked.

Here’s the productivity-pay dilemma: if a man assigned to carry a stretcher needs only one additional man, but a woman needs three additional people, should the man receive extra productivity pay if he partners with a man to carry the stretcher, freeing two other military people for other functions?

If a man is less likely to drop out of the armed services, more willing to be deployed, and more willing to do what it takes even at a much greater risk of being killed, is that productivity in military terms? And if so, should the men be awarded extra pay?

In conclusion, defining productivity is different for business, the government, and the individual. For business, it’s profit. For the government, it may be protecting the country as efficient as possible. Or it may be trying social solutions that may not benefit monetarily but could benefit socially – in this case, troubleshooting the problems created by the integration of women into the manual labor part of the workforce.

Divided responsibilities are the wave of the future – not just for women, but for many men, too. Not for all workers, but for some. Why? Technology. Cellular phones allow a mom to pick up an important call from a home-office-on-the-soccer-field while watching her daughter kick a goal past the Running Devils.

Laptop computers allow Dad to retrieve a file while his son is retrieving a fly. Instead of “home, home, on the range,” it’s office, office, in the home… where our sons and daughters roam.” Ironically, the same technologies that facilitated independence and the option of divorce and therefore the destruction of families is now also creating opportunities to reunite families.

A projection is that by 2020, approximately 70% of dads will have responsibilities that are significantly divided between work and home. Making use of the gift of working women, then, involves treating women as pioneers in helping companies adapt to the divided responsibilities that will be a twenty-first century reality. It also involves helping employees understand why someone with divided responsibilities cannot be paid as much as someone whose responsibilities are more fully focused on work. 
 


If you would like to see the book summary of "Why Men Earn More," please visit BusinessSummaries.com.

Get It Done

What happens when you create vitality, energy, and buzz in an organization? Well, you are certainly more visible, and you have more of a voice than others.

Your ideas will carry more weight and have more influence on the business. That means you have a better shot at getting other people to rally around your ideas.

Whether it’s calling to check in from a different time zone in the middle of the night, going the extra mile to research an issue, filling in when you are short staffed. Or connecting you to significant others in their network, people will give you more of their discretionary time and energy.

The best of the best will want to work with you, because thoroughbreds like to run with other thoroughbreds. People seek out people who energize them.

That means you have a better shot at putting together project teams that win. Do this enough and BOOM – you will build a reputation as someone the organization can trust with bigger or more important assignments.

Do you bring the same level of energy and passion to the game as those you admire – or envy?

Here are some things to consider if you want to become a “buzz agent” and bring more life to others and infuse more energy into the organization.

Give people a voice. When you create room for people to “weigh in” with their ideas, you value them – even if you disagree with them. When we are valued, we feel more vital to the organization. One of the greatest ways we can energize people is by asking for their insight, listening without distraction, and acting upon what we learn.

Build momentum. Have you ever arrived at the end of an extremely busy day and felt as though you accomplished nothing? We all want to know that we are making a difference. People get energized when they are going somewhere. You can help this along by being action oriented – by creating a sense of urgency.

Break the back of entitlement – banish it from your thinking. Entitlement is grounded in the belief that if I make a sacrifice for you or for the organization – guess what? – you owe me, baby! At some point each of us has to wake up to the fact that society is better served and we are better served when we stop claiming rights that we haven’t earned and step up to the plate of meritocracy.

You stand a much better chance of making a difference when you recognize that you earn your way into more responsibility, more autonomy, higher visibility, bigger jobs, more important roles, and better pay.

Looking for more business and career resources? BusinessSummaries.com has an online library of business book summaries of more than 500 titles. For more information, please visit the website and enjoy a one-month no-cost trial.

Branding Unbound

If you’re in marketing, advertising, or branding, consider this: While it used to take three television spots for a product to register with its intended audience, it can now take as many as seventy. Are people simply tuning out marketing messages?

No. They’re simply choosing which messages to tune in. Thanks to wireless technology, customers now have the luxury of responding (or not responding) to advertising when, where, and however they like.

Leading companies such as Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Kellogg’s, MTV, Procter & Gamble, and others are already reaching millions of customers, one at a time, wirelessly. The technology gives these companies an unprecedented view of buying patterns, and the ability to identify and market specifically to the most likely customers.

In the wireless marketing era, your brand can enjoy whole new levels of differentiation and customer recognition, while consumers benefit from on-the-spot convenience and a message individually tailored to their needs. Branding Unbound shows just how to harness the virtually limitless power of this amazing convergence of advanced technology and progressive business strategy to create the truly remarkable experience that will keep customers’ attention and win their loyalty.

This book reveals how your business can emulate some of the most powerful and successful branding strategies in the world.

Would you like to preview the book summary on Branding Unbound? Please visit BusinessSummaries.com and check it out!

Who is Anywhere Today?

To help clarify each of these distinct consumer segments, we’ve named the five groups to create intuitive impressions of each segment and how to reach it.

1. Analogs

In this revolution, the best way to describe them is to say that they are uninterested in digital technology. Analogs cannot even be called slow followers of our Anywhere trend, since they make the choice to avoid advanced technology altogether. Much of their reluctance may be the result of age; the Analogs are, in terms of average age, the oldest segment.

2. Technophytes

This is a group of consumers who aspire to be considered cutting edge when it comes to technology. In reality, though, they are late followers of digital media and connected devices. Why? Because while they are interested in these technologies, they don’t have the disposable income available to buy them until there are mature and more affordable. Technophytes want their Anywhere connections; they just can’t afford them until they are mainstream.

3. Digital Shut-ins

This is the group of consumers who have a great interest in digital media in their own homes, but less so when they are away from home. While these consumers enthusiastically embrace digital media, they aren’t as aggressive in adopting connected devices. Educating this segment remains important because Shut-ins often fail to equip their devices, such as HDTV, with all the services they support, like HD channel programming from their providers.

4. Outlet Jockeys

Along with consumers in our final segment, Outlet Jockeys own the latest and greatest portable devices and thirst for more of them. These mobile consumers enjoy cutting-edge portable applications as well as using their hand sets to e-mail, instant message, and engage in social networking.

5. Actualized Anywheres

Actualized Anywheres may be the smallest segment, comprising only 5 percent of the population in North America and Western Europe, but they are the most important. They enthusiastically buy Anywhere products and services for their mobile lifestyles, and, unlike Outlet Jockeys, they apply those devices and services at home. Actualized Anywheres bring the concept of a ubiquitously connected consumer to life.

Curious on knowing more about the "anywhere" concept and what it means to your business? Grab the summary on BusinessSummaries.com.