Rebecca L.

Adjacent skills are skills that are close or related to the ones you already have.

The main advantage is that you are not starting from scratch: you can usually use some of the knowledge from your existing skills to acquire adjacent skills. Not only will the process feel easier, but you will reinforce your current knowledge.

Gartner analysis shows that 46% of the workforce is projected to be working hybrid in the near future for midsize companies. Employees will have more choices about where, when, and how much they work.

In the past, managers used to be selected and promoted if they were able to manage and evaluate the performance of employees. Now managers are increasingly hired based on their ability to be great coaches and teachers.

The Xerox 914 copy machine of 1959 is a great breakthrough in office technology and product design. Its hallmark was simplicity: You simply paced your paper on glass and pressed a button.

How Chester Carlson invented it is a story of risk and persistence. As with most innovation, it took decades from having an idea to making it a real product in the marketplace.

Managers who can expand their imaginations to see a wider range of possible futures will be much better positioned to take advantage of the unexpected opportunities that appear.

By identifying basic trends and uncertainties, a manager can construct a series of scenarios that will help to compensate for decision-making errors from overconfidence and tunnel vision. That’s what scenario planning does. 

Workplace personality tests are used to sort people according to various thinking styles, such as into/extroversion and thinking/feeling.

Many psychologists feel that the theory behind the different categories fails to predict performance or to find high-performing candidates. Some critics even claim that it is a pseudoscience.

We all make decisions. However, few of us realize that the process we use to make decisions is more important than the analysis we put into the decision.

A McKinsey Quarterly survey pointed out that 60 percent of executives thought that bad decisions were as frequent as good decisions.

Being a CEO, or a celebrity is a sought-after state, something that is assumed to be empowering. The reality of power is quite different and shocking.

Most people dream of wealth, power, riches and fame, falsely believing that we control our destiny and fate, and if we just become richer or more famous, we will live the life we want to live, with complete freedom and autonomy.

Fixing employee productivity in the industrial age, when most workers were handling machinery and it’s parts, was a tedious but doable process. The managers had to fix the people who were making mistakes or were inefficient through systematic management.

Today, in the age of software and intellectual property, when half of the workforce is made up of knowledge workers, the old practices are of no use.

Many managers and leaders focus obsessively on their current jobs. They don't believe they can be successful without that single focus.

However, most realize that to advance your career, especially to the C-suite, you need diverse experiences in a variety of functions, industries, and geographies.